The Asshole Theory of International Relations: Why some countries are so ghastly and what to do about them

Some countries are assholes. They trample on international norms about human rights, weapons trafficking, maritime borders; sabotage negotiations to end civil wars; bully their weaker neighbours; and so on. They make and break promises repeatedly and shamelessly, and complain with violent indignation if they are challenged for it, all the while declaring their commitment to the highest ideals of international peace and cooperation.

You know the kind of country I'm talking about. The kind that believes in its own moral exceptionalism: Not only does it not feel bound by the ordinary rules; it even demands that other countries acknowledge its moral right to set its interests above their own or the international peace. Russia is an obvious current example. I'm sure you can think of others.

Je ne suis pas Charlie Hebdo: Assholes can't be Heroes

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Articles in defence of free speech are pouring out of all the usual places. They are eminently unnecessary. We don't need a theory of free speech or a defence of enlightenment liberalism to condemn sadistic murder, or to go through the rigmarole of weighing up the justice of fanatics' pretended motivations.

Liberal principles are at stake here, but they are those principles that constrain democracies from intemperate reactions, the ones that went missing in America after the World Trade Center attacks. Indeed many of the supposed defenders of our liberal values are enthusiastically carrying out the murderers' plan by promoting an us vs them tribalism. The same newspapers who routinely call for banning speech that offends their editors' sense of popular prejudices now pretend to defend the right to be offensive, but only, of course, to those 'who hate our freedoms', the evil muslim threat to civilisation.