Revision summary
Unrestrained national interest treats other nations as obstacles and produces spirals of distrust. Ethics does not erase self-defence; it sets reciprocity, kept promises, shared climate and civilian dignity as limits. Examples include the Paris climate pact, the Indus Waters Treaty, refugee protection, and vaccine sharing versus vaccine nationalism. Opaque debt and downstream river harm are interest without regard. Institutions and verification stop ethics from becoming naive surrender.
Model answer
Introduction
States are not saints. They seek security and advantage. Ethics does not abolish national interest. It asks that interest be pursued without treating another people as waste.
Body
The problem
- Realist practice says a State may lie, squeeze a neighbour’s river, or dump carbon if it gains. That practice produces arms races, refugee crises and climate harm that return as costs.
- “National interest without regard for others” is often a short-term factional interest wearing a flag: a contractor, a vote bank, or a general’s prestige.
How ethical consideration helps
- Reciprocity: do not do to a neighbour’s civilians what you would call a crime if done to yours. This lowers spiral revenge.
- Pacta sunt servanda: keep treaties. A broken water treaty or a broken border pact teaches the other side to arm.
- Common goods: climate, pandemics, and oceans cannot be won as zero-sum loot. Ethics names the shared duty.
- Human dignity: even in rivalry, prisoners of war, fishermen and students are not hostages of mood.
- Justice in trade: dumping and beggar-thy-neighbour tariffs create the next political crisis. Fair rules are ethics with a calculator.
- Truth in diplomacy: secret extra-territorial killing and fake maps may “work” for a season and poison trust for a generation.
Specific examples
- Climate: the Paris Agreement, 2015 asks common but differentiated responsibility. Ethical consideration is why a high-emitting rich State cannot lecture a poor State while refusing finance. India’s solar push and demand for climate finance sit in this frame.
- Water: the Indus Waters Treaty, 1960 survived wars because both sides treated a river as a shared life system, not only as a tap to punish. Threats to walk away raise ethical and strategic cost.
- Refugees: the 1951 Refugee Convention spirit (India is not a party but still hosts) says a drowning neighbour is not only a security file. Pushbacks that dump people into the sea fail that ethic and create lasting hate.
- COVID-19: vaccine nationalism and delayed COVAX supply showed interest without regard. Vaccine Maitri, when it was real supply and not only a headline, was the ethical counter-example — and it also built goodwill, which is interest rightly understood.
- Development partnerships versus debt traps: opaque loans that seize a port when unpaid are interest without regard. Transparent, demand-driven lines of credit are closer to justice.
- Humanitarian corridors in a war, and the Chemical Weapons Convention, show that even enemies can agree that some harms are not tools.
- River-linking or damming that ignores a downstream country’s farmers is the environmental-ethics problem at the border. Joint basin institutions are the ethical instrument.
Limits
- Ethics is not appeasement of aggression. Self-defence remains a right. The point is that how you defend still has a ceiling: no targeting of markets as a method, no collective punishment of a minority across the fence.
- A State that is ethical alone while others cheat can be exploited. Hence institutions, verification and a public that will not cheer a cheap cruelty.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD NI[Narrow national interest] --> TEN[Conflict and tension] ETH[Ethical consideration] --> REC[Reciprocity treaties common goods dignity] REC --> RES[Lower tension and durable interest] TEN --> RES
Conclusion
National interest is not cancelled by ethics. It is civilised by reciprocity, kept treaties, shared climate and the refusal to treat another people as instruments. Paris, Indus, vaccines and basin talks are examples. Cruelty that looks clever usually returns as tension.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Public servants are likely to confront the issues of "Conflict of Interest". What do you understand by the term "Conflict of Interest" and how does it manifest in the decision making by public servants? If faced with the conflict of interest situation how would you resolve it? Explain with the help of examples. (10 Marks).
Next question in the 2015 paper (Q8). View answer →
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Is talking ethics in foreign policy naive?
Using ethics as a sermon while grabbing a river is naive. Using it as reciprocity and institutions is how interest lasts.
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Must India ignore Chinese or Pakistani power because of ethics?
No. Defence remains. Ethics limits methods — civilians, prisoners, climate, and keeping one’s own word — not the right to exist.
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(a) What is meant by 'environmental ethics'? Why is it important to study? Discuss any one environmental issue from the viewpoint of environmental ethics. (10) (b) Differentiate between the following (10 marks) (200 Words) (i) Law and ethics (ii) Ethical management and management of ethics (iii) Discrimination and preferential treatment (iv) Personal Ethics and Professional Ethics.
Ethics and Human Interface
Environmental ethics judges human use of nature by duty to other beings and to future people, not only by this year’s profit. It matters because power and markets can destroy a river faster than custom can stop them; the dam and displacement case is one test. Law is enforceable rule; ethics is the wider right, which may bind when the law is silent or too thin. Ethical management is lived fairness; management of ethics is codes and cells that support it. Discrimination is harmful bias; preferential treatment is a limited constitutional correction. Personal ethics is private conscience; professional ethics is the duty of the chair.
Q2 · UPSC Mains 2015 · GS IV · 12 marks
Given are two quotations of moral thinkers/philosophers. For each of these bring out what it means to you in the present context. (a) "The weak can never forgive; forgiveness is the attribute of strong." (10) (b) "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light" (10 marks).
Moral Thinkers and Philosophers
Forgiveness is the choice of someone who could retaliate and does not need revenge to remain whole. It is not a command that victims of grave crime hug offenders; justice can come first. In public life, strength is a firm file without spite, and peace after law, not a blood feud. Fear of the light is adult refusal of truth, RTI, science and dissent. The tragedy is punishing the lamp; administration should default to openness, not to a locked cupboard.
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Probity in Governance
Legal compliance is a minimum; ethical sensibility is needed where the section is silent or a paper lie looks complete. An act can be ethically right and legally incomplete, as in a narrowly recorded rescue in a disaster. An act can be legally regular and ethically wrong, as in paying a technically perfect false muster. Trustworthiness is being reliable in figures, promises and impartiality. Fortitude is lasting courage to record a lawful no; together they make public service more than a Gazette.
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