Samenvatting

The authors show that in debates between the old schools of Liberals and Idealists and recent offspring within these schools, the main argument concerns the moral responsibility of states and statesmen. Their discussion of Carr reappear among advocates of present-day humanitarian interventions. They argue that E.H. Carr's critique of idealism is still meaningfull to us, even if more than seventy years have gone by since it was written down. The nature of way may have changed from large-scale conflict to post-modern operations, but we still face the same dilemmas not only on the level of the state, but also on the micro-level of the individual soldier