0007

reason for the negative outcome might be a failure to predict correctly what the
results of that course of action might be. Another possible reason might be the
intervention of unforeseen circumstances. Second, where for sound ethical reasons
an actor does something, but, because of a misunderstanding or lack of knowl-
edge about the circumstances in which he/she is acting, ends up acting in a way
that is very unethical in terms of the actor’s own ethical standards. An example
is provided by the tragic drama of Oedipus Rex, in which Oedipus killed his own
father not knowing at the time, that the person with whom he was fighting was
his father. Third, where an actor does something for good ethical reasons within
one social practice within which he/she is participating, but, by so doing, flouts
the rules and ethical norms embedded in an alternative social practice within
which he/she is concurrently a participant.

In an earlier article, I gave as a hypothetical example of this third kind of tragedy

the predicament that might well have confronted two well-known South African
brothers, Breyten Breytenbach, a well-known poet and his brother Jan Breyten-
bach, a famous General in the South African Defence Force. Breyten Breytenbach
was for a while a member of a liberation movement (the government called it a
‘terrorist’ organization) fighting against the apartheid regime in South Africa
(Frost, 2003: 481). His brother, Jan Breytenbach, a General in the SADF, was
in charge of the notorious 32 Battalion fighting in Angola. It is not too far-fetched
to imagine an encounter in Angola where Breyten found himself, together with
his ‘stick’ of freedom fighters, in a position to ambush a convoy in which his
brother, Jan, was travelling. Had this happened, he would have confronted the
following tragic dilemma: if he proceeded with the ambush, he would have risked
killing his brother. To have killed his brother would have gone against what was
ethically required of him as a participant in the practice that we know as ‘the
family’ with its associated ethical commitments. Alternatively, had he deliber-
ately let the convoy escape the ambush, he would have been acting contrary to
what was required of him as ‘comrade’ within the liberation movement with its
associated ethical commitments.

In the circumstances as described, whatever he did was going to bring about

what for him would have been an ethically noxious outcome. In a tragic dilemma
like this, the actor faces what from an ethical perspective might be called a
‘lose/lose’ predicament. Whatever the actor chooses to do will result in what the
actor him/herself deems an ethically bad outcome. Note that in such situations
the actor confronting the tragic dilemma is specifically not confronting an ethical
puzzle where there is a single right answer that would have enabled him/her to
avoid the tragic consequence. The tragic situation is portrayed as one in which
the actor is profoundly committed to the values implicit in both of the practices
that have come into conflict in the particular case. Finally, it is important to note
that it is precisely not the case, in these situations, that the actor has turned
his/her back on one of the social practices in the way that, for example, Marx
and Engels recommended that communists should turn their backs on the bour-
geois institution of the family.

In tragic stories of this kind we, the audience, are to understand that the actor

is constituted as a member in good standing of the social practices that produced

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the dilemma. In the face of such dilemmas we see the hero having to make a tragic
choice (or we see him/her making it unwittingly) and then having to live with the
consequences. By taking the choice to spring the ambush and kill his brother,
Breyten would have remained true to his ‘freedom fighter’ comrades and offended
the ethic embedded in the institution of the family. But, in doing this, he would
not have been turning his back on the institution of the family and repudiating
all that it stood for. Quite the contrary, in tragic stories, as traditionally told, he
would have been filled with remorse at having offended the ethic of family life.
He would have had to shoulder the pain that his wrongdoing caused him.

The account that I have offered here of what is involved in analyses deploying

the notion of tragedy is different from a well-known realist view about the un-
avoidable ‘tragic’ dimension of all international politics. According to these latter
accounts, the structures of international relations impose on international actors
a requirement to behave in ways that infringe the constraints of conventional
morality. On this view, necessity dictates that states must under certain circum-
stances flout morality in order to pursue the national interest. In these accounts,
necessity dictates that the interests of sovereign states are to override other moral
considerations. In the account of the third form of tragedy presented above, the
only ‘necessity’ facing the actor is that a choice be made between clashing ethical
imperatives.

The basic elements of this story, with a number of different permutations, are

to be found in most of the great tragedies as recounted by the Greek playwrights
Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. I shall not detail the permutations here.
Notice the role that emotions play in such tragedies. The tragic hero, when
confronting a tragic choice, is filled with the agony of it. Indeed, this is the origin
of this powerful word. Not only is the choice agonizing, but so, too, are the
consequences of the choice once made.

The tragic moment of ethical awareness

is anything but a cold calculation of duty. What makes the choice so agonizing
is that the actor realizes (or where he/she does not, the audience to the tragedy
realizes) that whatever choice he/she makes will result in him/her being excluded
(excommunicated, ostracized) from one of the key practices within which he/she
is constituted. To sum up once again, the word ‘tragedy’ refers to what one might
call the ethically bad consequences of a good deed.

A lot of what we know about the ethical dilemmas of tragedy has been taught

to us by means of the plays that have come down to us in the literary tradition
of tragedy. For the most part, these have recounted the dilemmas confronted by
individual actors. In like manner, the example that I used above has demonstrated
the tragic dilemma that might have confronted an individual actor in Angola. The
question now arises: does the notion of tragedy only apply to individual actors
who are confronting the consequences of their good ethical choices, or, may it
also be pertinent to the consequences of the choices confronted by collective
actors? I ask this because in international relations (IR), our main focus is on the
actions of collective actors such as nations, states, non-governmental organizations,
multinational corporations and international organizations. In the IR literature,
we do, indeed, find theorists who have made prominent use of the notion of
tragedy and who have used it to apply to collective actors. In the realist tradition,

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there are several authors who have insisted that there is something fundamen-
tally tragic about international affairs. These include Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans
Morgenthau, John Mearsheimer and, more recently it has been used in an
interpretation of realism, by Ned Lebow (see Lebow, 2003; Mearsheimer, 2001;
Morgenthau, 1947; Niebuhr, 1932). For the most part, these authors specify that
the tragedy encountered in international relations consists of the consequences
that flow from the actions that states consider to be ethically appropriate. These
consequences then turn out to be corrosive of the very values in whose name the
initial action was undertaken. In other words, these are tragedies of type one and
type two mentioned above. Also, in the international domain, on this view,
collective actors often have to make a choice between doing what they consider
ethically desirable or doing what is required by the nature of international affairs.
There are imperatives at work which make the achievement of the ethical
outcomes that are sought, impossible.

In order to make the case that collective actors like clans, families, ethnic

groups, nations, corporations and states (to mention but a few) can confront
tragic choices of the third kind mentioned above, we have to be able to show
that these collective actors can be participants in several different practices at the
same time. This is not difficult. Consider how a single state may be a participant
in the practice of states, subscribing to all the rules of international law, and so on,
and yet, at the same time, that state might also participate in a religious organiz-
ation, an Islamic one, for example. Other social practices to which states might
belong include regional arrangements such as the European Union, the African
Union, and the United Nations. States might also participate in international
economic organizations such the World Trade Organization or ECOWAS. They
might also be bound together in something like the Arab League. It is not diffi-
cult to find states being confronted with tragic choices as a result of their simul-
taneous participation in these practices. A state like Egypt confronted a tragic
choice between cooperating with the USA and others in seeking to bring about a
resolution of the Israel/Palestinian dispute, or, remaining true to the commitments
of the Arab League which opposed any measure that recognized the legitimacy
of the state of Israeli. True to the classic tragic tradition, in 1979, when Egypt
made a decision to recognize Israel, a consequence that flowed from this was that
Egypt was expelled from the Arab League. This was the consequence of the tragic
choice it was forced to make. In this case, no compromise solution was possible.

Another example of a collective actor facing a tragic choice is provided by the

choice faced by the South African state with regard to the white minority govern-
ment in Rhodesia in the late 1970s. On the one hand, the South African
government saw itself as committed to supporting fellow whites in the govern-
ment of Ian Smith in Rhodesia (the commitment was, it was said, to ‘civiliz-
ation’) while at the same time, it was committed to being a good participant in
the practice of sovereign states globally. In 1979, the government had to choose
between supporting ‘civilized rule’ in Rhodesia or doing what was required of it
by the international community of states which was to impose stringent economic
sanctions on Rhodesia to force it to the negotiating table to bring an end to the

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internationally condemned UDI. For the National Party as a whole, and for
Prime Minister John Vorster, in particular, letting the Rhodesian white govern-
ment down was a tragic choice. It was not that the SA government had decided
that minority rule in Rhodesia was wrong. Instead, it decided that its own
standing in the community of sovereign states was more important than main-
taining the respect of Ian Smith and his followers. It reneged on what it still
understood to be its ethical commitments. We can imagine a similar tragic
dilemma confronting the USA in the not too distant future with regard to its
relationship with Israel. Since the end of the Second World War, the USA,
together with many other states that were allies at that time, has participated in
an international practice seeking to compensate the Jewish people for their losses
endured during the war and to secure for the Jews a homeland of their own. Doing
all of this was considered a moral duty. However, these commitments have now
come into conflict with those ethical commitments embedded in the system of
sovereign states which require that the Palestinian people themselves be afforded
the opportunity of self-determination in a state of their own. Within the system
of sovereign states, there is a growing pressure for a resolution of this problem. At
some point, the USA and others will have to decide whether to do the right thing
as required within the system of sovereign states, or do the right thing as required
within the post-Holocaust practice of support for a Jewish homeland. The out-
come will be that it will experience tragic ostracism from one of the practices.

Tragedy, Identity and Emotion

From the great tragic plays, it is clear that to confront a tragic choice (or the conse-
quences of one) is a harrowing experience, both for the actors and for the audience
to such deeds. It is so, for two reasons, first, whichever way the actor decides to
act, he/she will do something that is ethically correct from the point of view of
one constitutive practice, but at the same time he/she will be doing (or not doing)
something ethically wrong in the other. To be a participant in the kinds of prac-
tices involved in tragedies involves knowing the appropriate emotions for given
actions and the appropriate emotional reaction to the actions of others.

For

example, a member of a nation understands what actions call for celebration and
what for despair. Just as a member of a church knows when it is appropriate to
be joyful and when it is proper to grieve. For an ethical person in a given social
practice, it is usually the case that doing wrong (through an action or inaction)
is a cause of emotional pain. When confronted with tragedy, the pain is magni-
fied because in such a case the actor is faced with the loss of a valued ethically
charged identity. In tragedies, actors face the combined pain of wrongdoing and
this is then followed by the pain of exclusion.

We are all constituted as who we value ourselves to be, through our partici-

pation in social practices within which, through a process of mutual recognition,
we achieve a particular valued identity.

Thus, for example, I am constituted as

a citizen within the social arrangement we know as a democratic state, which

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itself is situated within the wider society of sovereign states. My self-esteem
depends on the recognition conferred on me by my fellow citizens. Being a
citizen requires of me that I adhere to a whole raft of democratic commitments.
Were recognition withdrawn from me, I would feel this to be a severe loss of a
valued identity. I would feel myself to have been damaged from an ethical point
of view. No doubt the deprivation would be accompanied by the emotion of
anger (it certainly would not be accompanied by joy). This is what happened to
many white and black South Africans during the apartheid era. They confronted
a tragic choice between maintaining their status as citizens of the state under
apartheid rule, or remaining true to their liberal (or Christian, or communist, or
socialist, or Islamic) beliefs. In many cases, such a tragic choice led them to leave
their country and to forfeit their citizenship. The emotional impact of such
choices was, for many, devastating.

What makes tragedy so excruciating is that a double dose of ethical anguish

is administered to the actor by the actor’s own hand. The ethical suffering experi-
enced in tragedy is significantly worse than that experienced by an actor who is
guilty of an ordinary instance of moral weakness or ethical backsliding. Within
many social practices, in the normal run of events, it may often happen that an
actor (oneself ) is guilty of an ethical wrongdoing which may be deliberate or which
may have been done through weakness of will. For example, consider a case of
failing to do one’s duty. One might feel remorse at having failed to do what one
ought to have done, yet still regard oneself (and have others regard one) as an
ethical actor in good standing within the society. The failure does not cut to the
root of who we are and what we stand for. Generally, after such an ethical failure,
one resolves to do better next time and not to make the same mistake again. The
emotional pain associated with this kind of wrongdoing may be intense, but it
is temporary and one can seek to make amends.

In cases of tragedy the situation is quite different. Here, the actor is faced with

a major infringement of a fundamental ethical rule of the practice in question.
In tragic circumstances, the infringement is so fundamental, that by committing
it, the actor knows, and everybody else knows too, that he/she is no longer a
worthy participant in the practice in question. Killing a brother for reasons to
do with having chosen to prefer an ethical commitment in an alternative practice
(such as a liberation movement) is clearly an example of an act that deprives an
actor of his/her good standing in the family context. This kind of choice cannot
be construed as a temporary slip-up. It seems to me that an appropriate way to
express this is to say that in tragedies (of the third kind identified above) the actor
faces the loss of a valued identity through his/her own deed. The loss in such
cases is such that it cannot be finessed by reinterpreting either of the social prac-
tices in question. The mark of a person who knows that he/she faces a tragic
choice is that in some broad way he/she accepts the characterization of the ethical
dilemma as I have outlined it.

I have been discussing the emotions associated with the experience of tragedy.

The question now arises whether it makes sense to speak of collective actors
experiencing similar emotions when confronting tragic choices. In an earlier

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section, I made the claim that collective actors can indeed confront tragic
dilemmas. But, can and do such actors experience the emotion associated with
individual tragedies? We certainly talk about them as though they did. For
example, when a state has to undertake a particular course of action for the sake
of maintaining a balance of power, and where doing this involves reneging on
other commitments incurred in different social practices, we may speak of the
state experiencing the emotions associated with tragedy. The Cold War provides
many examples of this kind of thing. Many states had to enter into alliances with
other states that were ethically obnoxious from the point of view of other prac-
tices within which the alliance seeking states were participating. For example, the
USA was required in terms of the Cold War balance to seek allies in Africa where
many of the potential allies (Zaire) were far from democratic. But, in doing so
it infringed the ethical commitments it had as a member of international liberal/
democratic society. It was faced with the tragic choice of remaining true to its
commitments in one practice or to those in another. Dealing with dictators (such
as Mobutu Sese Seko) involved the USA losing its squeaky-clean membership of
international practice of liberal states. It was, one might say, supping with the
devil. Similar things happened in World War II when the Allies had to seek
support from communist states such as the USSR. It seems to me that today,
nations feel themselves to be standing before this kind of tragic choice in some
aspects of the war against global terror. Here, states are required to do things to
curtail the activity of the so-called ‘terrorists’, but the things they are required
to do in this struggle, offend against fundamental norms of other practices within
which they are constituted as who they value themselves to be. Thus, in terms
of normal human rights commitments, states are not entitled to kill civilians, but
in the war against terror, as fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, civilians have been
killed. Attempts have been made to minimize the civilian casualties, but leaders
like Tony Blair see themselves as confronting a tragic choice.

Many citizens did,

too. In Jewish lore, the events at Masada certainly fit the tragic mould.

Tragic Descriptions and the Alternatives

When presenting an account of a set of events as tragic, an author is, of course,
making certain ethical judgements. In most cases, there are rival accounts that
could have been given of the same events in non-tragic terms. States of affairs do
not come neatly packaged as tragedies. Authors choose to present them as such.
Consider, once again, the case of Rhodesia. Prior to receiving independence under
the new name of Zimbabwe, there had been a bloody civil war in Rhodesia. One
way of presenting that war would be to describe it as a conflict between two
major black liberation movements, on the one hand, and a white minority govern-
ment supported by the Rhodesian Armed Forces, on the other. The description
could easily be set up in a way which showed the liberation movements to be
motivated by ethical principles such as the pursuit of justice, freedom, the rule
of law, democracy and human rights. They could be portrayed as fighting a

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justified war of national liberation as endorsed by the United Nations. These
fighters for justice could be portrayed as fighting against a white minority group
who sought to defend the ethically indefensible – a white, race-based colonial
rule which entrenched white privilege. This would be to present the fight as
one between good and evil. Typically, those fighting on the white side could
be presented as ethically obnoxious, misguided, wrong-headed, irrational, self-
centred, and so on. The soldiers who fought for the minority government in the
bloody civil war could be presented as war criminals who offended against inter-
national humanitarian law and international human rights law (although at that
time, these were not as well developed and clearly articulated as they are now).
Quite simply, on this account, they would be portrayed as wrong-doers. In terms
of just war theory, questions could be raised about whether the Smith regime
possessed right authority to wage the war, whether it had just cause, whether it
had a reasonable chance of success, whether it was making use of just means in
waging the war, and so on.

An alternative account could be put together which presented the civil war in

tragic terms. A recent attempt to do this is to be found in the book Scribbling
the Cat written by Alexandra Fuller (Fuller, 2004). This is a gripping book in
which she describes a recent trip to Zambia to visit her parents. She had spent
her childhood in Rhodesia and this period had coincided with the civil war. On
her return visit, she meets a forceful and remarkable character ‘K’, who had been
a special forces soldier fighting for the Rhodesian government. Fascinated by his
story of the war, she ends up accompanying him on his return to the places where
the fighting took place. It is a harrowing experience for her, for him, and for the
reader. She recounts meeting a number of other veterans from the struggle, both
black and white. She presents graphic descriptions of the brutality of the soldiers
fighting what they considered to be a just counter-insurgency war. Details of
torture and killing are described. The practice of the war is described, but no
attempt is made to evaluate the war in any overt way. No justification for the war
is offered one way or the other. Nevertheless, there are some ethical judgements
underlying her account. What is shown is the commitment, the dedication and
the loyalty of the soldiers to one another. They are presented as brave. Further-
more, what is shown are the consequences of that war for its black victims, for
society as a whole and in particular for ‘K’ and soldiers like him. Some have turned
to God, others to the bottle, all are living more or less as recluses. What is clear,
though, is that the author is presenting us with a tragic interpretation of that
war. During the war, the men whose behaviour she describes thought they were
fighting for an ethical purpose. It has subsequently become absolutely clear to
them that the consequences of what they did are not at all laudable in terms of
the standards they had professed. It is clear that they remember the earlier times
as exciting, but with hindsight they are filled with horror at what they did.

What is the reader to make of this? On Fuller’s account, ‘K’ and his cohort

come across as ruthless soldiers, but also as people who had been fired with a
sense of ethical purpose. At the time, they thought they were doing the right
thing. Ian Smith had told them they were fighting for the maintenance of

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‘civilized standards’. They can see now with the benefit of hindsight that they
had descended to barbarism. In true tragic form, they now have to live with the
consequences of their deeds. The emotional effect of the book is noteworthy, we,
the readers, are brought to have sympathy for the soldiers. They are portrayed in
some broad sense as themselves being victims. Their lives have been wrecked.
They are unable to maintain ordinary human relationships. They are haunted by
nightmares.

Contrast the account given in Scribbling the Cat with the very different account

outlined above – an account informed by a different ethical judgement which
calls forth different emotional responses. Here, I have in mind an account which
might have described the same events and actions, but seen through the prism
of just war principles and the rules of international law. This body of law
enshrines the individual human rights of individual men and women and also
protects the rights of people to national self-determination. It also contains a
general prohibition on armed intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign
states except in cases where there has been a gross violation of human rights. Such
an account would call forth a different set of emotional responses from readers.
Once such a picture has been sketched, then the emotional response required of
the reader would be one of anger and outrage directed at the war criminals. The
reader would want justice through some procedure such as that offered by a war
crimes tribunal.

In summary, then, an account of a set of events in tragic form calls forth a

completely different emotional response to an account of the same set of events
in terms of a just war template. We the readers know what the appropriate feelings
are for different kinds of description supported by different kinds of ethical
judgement.

In giving an account of the Rhodesian war, authors have a choice to make. I

have described one of the possible choices – to describe it as a tragedy, on the
one hand, or to describe it as an unjust war using unjust means, on the other. Is
this an arbitrary choice or can reasons be given for preferring one account over
the other? The war certainly does not come ready labelled. An account which
portrays the actions of this set of soldiers as war crimes does not take seriously
the point of view of the soldiers concerned, soldiers like ‘K’ and the others that
Fuller describes. The alternative account – the tragic one – is more sympathetic
to these actors. It shows what they thought and felt about what they were doing.
It situates them as actors who are constituted within a given social practice. As
such, they are directed and constrained by the ethic embedded in the practice.
Another way of putting this is to make the standard communitarian point that
actors, and the ethic in terms of which they conduct themselves, can only be
understood within the context of some or other social community. Fuller
portrays ‘K’ as situated within the ethics of the Rhodesian Armed Forces which
themselves were located within a given political community with its associated
ethical commitments. When looked at in this way, we can see soldiers like this
as in some broad sense victims of a war that was not of their making. Given who
they were, given the identities that they occupied, they conducted themselves

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ethically. They thought they were fighting for freedom, justice, democracy, the
rule of law, and that they were opposing the lack of freedom of a centrally
planned communist regime. In the event, their good faith actions have not led
to the outcome they sought, but to something of which they are ashamed.

It is easy to see how a similar story could be told about other conflicts, such

as that in South Africa, between the white minority government and the ANC,
and the struggle between the Serbs and the Bosnians, and, that between the
Serbs and the Kosovars. I can imagine authors like Alexandra Fuller emerging to
give tragic accounts of these wars. Such accounts would show that the South
African whites and the Serbs thought they were doing the ethically right thing
only to discover subsequently how misguided they had been. It would show them
having to live with the horror of what they had achieved. When such books start
to emerge, the reader will be asked to have sympathy with these tragic characters.
Here again, the contrast would be with accounts of the same events which portray
the soldiers as war criminals and those which invite us to respond with anger,
condemnation and revulsion. We, the audience of such accounts, will be asked
to allow our feelings to follow the descriptions given.

In Support of Tragic Accounts of International Conflict

I wish to make the case that there are good reasons when analyzing international
affairs to seek out and present them in tragic terms. We all too often describe
international affairs in terms that are altogether too simple – in terms that do
not fully take into account the range of diverse ethical practices within which we
concurrently participate. We behold the actions of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and
condemn them in terms of human rights norms. In response to what was going
on there between the first and second Iraqi War, we are inclined to say that the
Iraqi government together with its police, army and other security apparatuses was
engaged in systematic human rights abuses. From our point of view, this is indeed
true, but it gives us little indication of the ethical reasons they might have had
for doing what they did. It gives us little indication of their self-understanding.
In the absence of this, we have little idea of how they will act in future. The
person seeking to give a tragic account would approach the whole matter in a
different way.

The first thing that the social analyst seeking the tragic point of view would

undertake would be to situate the actors within the social formations within
which they were constituted as actors of a certain kind. Crucial to this would be
the need to get to grips with their own self-understanding of who they are/were
and what they were doing. In this case, the initial move would be to understand
Saddam Hussein and his cohort within the context of their immediate families,
their wider clans, the Baathist movement, and the wider Iraqi political society.
More widely still, it would seek to understand the Iraqi state within the society
of states (local and international). Each of these would impose certain rules of
conduct on the participants in them. Furthermore, the analyst would seek to

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understand the ethical commitments which underpinned the rules of each
practice. It follows then, that in seeking to understand the actions of this regime,
the analyst would assume at the outset that Saddam Hussein and his supporters
sought to act in accordance with the ethical principles embedded in these prac-
tices. This kind of analysis would bring to light the ethical conflicts, tensions and
contradictions besetting those who seek to concurrently participate in these diverse
social arrangements. It would bring to light the tragic choices that confronted such
actors. It would show how existential choices had to be made between loyalty to
the clan and loyalty to the values implicit in the system of sovereign states.

Applying the same method, the analyst seeking to use tragedy as an analytical

tool to account for the behaviour of Britain and the USA in the second war against
Iraq would situate President George W. Bush and the then Prime Minister Tony
Blair in specific Christian traditions which dictated what would count as appro-
priate conduct towards Iraq. The ethic embedded in these traditions could be
shown to have led these leaders to adopt a certain course of action. The action
had tragic outcomes in that it undermined their standing within the society of
sovereign states.

This approach requires that the analyst locate the actors within their social

contexts, it also requires that the analyst take account of the context in all its
complexity. What is particularly important here is that the analyst note that all
social actors are simultaneously participants in a number of discrete practices.
The rules and ethics which underpin these do not always coincide to form a
harmonious whole. As we have seen, this is often a source of tragedy. We have
seen above how an actor following the dictates of one practice can end up having
himself excluded from participation in another in a way that is tragic. The analyst
who gives an account of an occurrence in international relations taking all this
into consideration will bring to the attention of the reader the complex ethical
dilemmas faced by actors in the field under analysis. For example, this kind of
analysis when applied to contemporary events in Israel would show how Israeli
citizens are caught between a social imperative to either honour the ethic em-
bedded in Zionism, or to honour what is required of them as members of the
global practice of human rights and the practice of sovereign states which requires
them to allow the self-determination of the Palestinians.

Such modes of analyses will greatly improve our ability to set in train processes

of reconciliation and reconstruction after the conflict has ended. It will do so
because it takes seriously the fact that all parties to such conflicts are confronting
complex ethical problems rather than simply ‘doing wrong’ in terms of some
simple set of universal ethical criteria. Another good reason for adopting an
approach to international analysis which seeks out its tragic dimension, is that it
makes clear how actors often face what might be termed existential dilemmas in
this field. We saw an example of just this kind of dilemma when we considered
the case of Breyten Breytenbach above. The choice he was presented as facing, a
choice between the family or the liberation struggle went to the very heart of
who he was and who he understood himself to be. It seems to me that we who
are faced with questions about what to do in international relations would be

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well advised to understand the existential dilemmas that face those with whom
we are dealing.

Furthermore, the use of tragedy as an analytical tool by IR theorists would

force them to take note of the close connection between abstract analysis and
human emotion. A tragic analysis of the actions taken by white Rhodesians, white
South Africans, Israelis, Serbs, Christian fundamentalists, Chechens, and so on,
reveals to the audience reading such accounts not only the self-understandings
of the people being analyzed, but also their understanding of the appropriate
emotions to go with their chosen actions in given circumstances. A full under-
standing of the emotional dimension of tragedy would enable the readers of such
tragic analyses to anticipate what kinds of post-conflict policies are likely to work
in a given case. When people’s identities are at stake, when the dilemmas they
face are existential ones, emotions are likely to run very high. In seeking a reso-
lution to conflict in such areas it is very important to understand what one might
term, the emotional terrain. A good example of someone with a profound under-
standing of this was provided by Nelson Mandela during the transition in South
Africa. He did not remain fixated on an analysis of the South African political
terrain which simply stressed the injustices and the human rights abuses that had
been committed by the white minority regime. Instead, he fully understood the
emotional commitments of many members of the ruling Nationalist Party. This
understanding allowed him to adopt negotiating strategies that turned out to be
successful.

An analysis which develops and seeks out the tragic dimensions of a given

situation brings to the attention of the audience the difficulties it will face in trying
to harmonize contradictory practices. For example, I believe that a major tragedy
of our time, one that we are still in the midst of, is caused by our simultaneous
participation in a global rights-based practice which I call global civil society, and
the global practice of sovereign states. In terms of the former, we are required to
respect the human rights of all our fellow participants wherever they happen to
be. In terms of the latter, we have an ethical duty to place the interests of our
own sovereign state first. In many areas, this leads to tragic consequences. For
example, in our treatment of economic migrants, asylum seekers and refugees of
one kind or another, we are often forced to make a tragic choice between our
commitment to their human rights and our commitment to our sovereign states.
This form of analysis brings home to the reader that the task before us, if this
tragedy is not to simply go on replaying itself, is how to reform the constitu-
tional structures of global civil society and the society of sovereign states so that
they do not exist in tension with one another. The problem is how to harmo-
nize them.

A further merit of this form of analysis is that it brings home to the audience

that tragic outcomes are not brought about so much by the individual choices of
people, but by conflicts within the wider practices within which those people are
constituted as actors of a certain kind. It shows the individual person to be trapped
or caged in the wider practices and it indicates that the way forward, the only
way out of an endless repetition of tragedy, is joint action by the participants in

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these practices to bring them into harmony with one another. What is called for,
then, is political action. The tragic ethical dilemmas experienced by individuals
can only be prevented by political action by the many.

Tragedy and Reconstruction

To analyse a given occurrence in tragic terms is to demonstrate to the audience
to whom the account is being given, the relationship between the actor and social
practice or practices within which he is constituted as an actor of a certain kind.
The tragic picture reveals to the audience how an actor who, all things considered,
does the ethically appropriate thing in a given context, can nevertheless bring
about a set of consequences which undermine the very values in the name of
which the action was initially undertaken. The audience is brought to see in a
very clear way how virtue is not necessarily its own reward. It shows how the
actor even though he did not intend the ethically noxious outcomes is, never-
theless, held ethically responsible by his fellow participants in the practice, by the
audience and by the actor himself.

We must now ask ourselves whether tragedy is a necessary feature of social life

and will always be so, or is it possible to learn from tragedies and to change things
in ways that might make tragedy avoidable in future.

It seems to me that in the traditional Greek plays the conclusion that the

dramatists wanted the audience (us) to draw was that tragedy is a permanent
feature of human life. Viewing a tragic play gave the audience an opportunity to
experience an emotional catharsis, but it did not give any advice about the recon-
struction or transformation of society. The lesson to be learned was that this was
how the world worked and we, as humans, ought to be reconciled to this. On
this view, tragedy was a permanent possibility and the effect of such dramas
was essentially conservative even quietist. There was nothing to be done about
tragedy. In a broad sense then, it seems to me, the classic tragedies endorsed the
status quo. In terms of the understandings of human society prevalent at that
time, this was probably correct. However, in the contemporary world, especially
in the light of the strides made by a constructivist theory in recent times, we have
come to recognize that the world we live is a world of our making. In other
words, after having reviewed an occurrence through a tragic lens, we (the people)
can nowadays contemplate the possibility of transforming one or more of the
practices within which the protagonist committed the act that led to the tragic
outcome. Thus, for example, a modern person after viewing the play, Antigone,
which portrayed the clash of commitments she experienced (between those she
owed her family and those she owed to the King) could contemplate the reform
of either the family structure or the political structure of the kingdom (or both)
so that this kind of clash would not occur again in the future. The crucial thing
to notice, though, is that this kind of reconstruction would require political
action by all or most of the participants in these practices. The tragedy could not
be avoided through the change of behaviour by the protagonist alone. It seems

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to me that one of the great benefits of presenting an occurrence in tragic terms
is that the emotions evoked by it would move an audience in such a way that it
might well stir it to undertake political reform. It might be amenable to the
exploration of the possibility of political transformation.

Notes

1 In some tragic stories, the moment of tragedy only comes to light after the event, as

when Oedipus, discovers the man that he has killed is his father. The outcome is the
same. He was devastated at what he has done, but what was done, was not at the time,
‘the wrong thing to do’. The same applies to the case of Antigone who disobeyed the
king in order to bury her brother.

2 In passing, I might mention that I have objections to the realist notion that the form

of international affairs is given as it were ‘by nature’. Instead, I would argue, following
constructivist modes of thinking, that international relations is not given ‘by nature’
but, is itself a social form which can be changed and transformed. For example, the
international order has changed from a feudal form, to various imperial forms and
then to the form that we find in the modern system of sovereign states. The existing
international order is neither static nor natural.

3 This assertion clearly distances me from all those approaches to emotions that associate

them with bodily events as per the James–Lange thesis.

4 For an extended discussion of the ethics of recognition, see Robert R. Williams (1997),

passim.

5 They were many permutations here. Some felt that, as citizens, they had an obligation

to oppose the government of the day and that this could best be done by staying
within the country. When legislation made legal opposition impossible, they were
then faced with a choice of going into opposition outside the law or giving up on
opposition. If they chose to operate ‘underground’, then this often threatened their
family life. So here, once again, they faced a tragic choice: opt for the underground
opposition or opt to protect their families (by retreating from politics). Here once
again, the actor faced a typical tragic lose/lose predicament.

6 In an interview with Parkinson, he clearly articulated his dilemma in just this way.
7 For an extended discussion of just war principles, see Bellamy (2006).
8 There is another tragic interpretation of this war that we might look at. The support-

ers of the black liberation movements ZANU and ZAPU fought for united, non-racial,
democratic society. What they have got now is, tragically, a corrupt oligarchical system
of rule which borders on being a kleptocracy. The consequences of their ethically
driven deeds have undermined the values that they fought for. This for them is a
tragedy. Through doing the right thing, they brought about the wrong result.

References

Bellamy, Alex J. (2006) Just Wars from Cicero to Iraq. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Frost, Mervyn (2003) ‘Tragedy, Ethics and International Relations’, International Relations

17(4): 477–95.

Fuller, Alexandra (2004) Scribbling the Cat. New York: Picador.

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Lebow, Richard, Ned (2003) The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mearsheimer, John (2001) The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: Norton.
Morgenthau, Hans (1947) Scientific Man versus Power Politics. London: Latimer House.
Niebuhr, R. ([1932] 1963) Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics.

London: SCM Press.

Williams, Robert R. (1997) Hegel’s Ethics of Recognition. Berkeley and Los Angeles:

University of California Press.

■

Mervyn Frost

is Professor of International Relations, and Head of the Depart-

ment of War Studies at King’s College, London. He was educated at the University
of Stellenbosch and subsequently, as a Rhodes Scholar, he read Politics at Oxford.
He held lectureships at the University of Cape Town and at Rhodes University
before being appointed to the Chair of Politics and Head of Department at the
University of Natal in Durban in 1986. In 1996, he was appointed Professor of Inter-
national Relations at the University of Kent in Canterbury. His research interest is
in the field of ethics in international relations. His publications include: Towards a
Normative Theory of International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 1986),
Ethics in International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 1996), and Consti-
tuting Human Rights: Global Civil Society and the Society of Democratic States
(Routledge, 2002). He has published in Political Studies, The Review of International
Studies, International Relations, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Theoria
and Millennium: Journal of International Studies. Address: Department of War
Studies, King’s College, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK. [email: mervyn.frost@kcl.
ac.uk]

■

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