"The theoretical postulate of all diplomatic discussion between nations is the assumed willingness of every nation to do justice"
About this Quote
Diplomacy runs on a polite fiction: that everyone at the table is, at minimum, open to being fair. Elihu Root, a lawyer who helped professionalize American statecraft in the early 20th century, frames that fiction as a "theoretical postulate" - legal language that does a lot of work. A postulate is not an observation; it's an axiom you adopt so the system can function. Root is admitting that international talk is less a meeting of minds than a procedural agreement to behave as if justice is on offer.
The phrase "assumed willingness" is the tell. He isn't praising nations for their moral seriousness; he's diagnosing the fragile premise that keeps negotiations from collapsing into naked power contests. In Root's era - the Hague conferences, arbitration dreams, the uneasy confidence of a rising U.S. - the hope was that rules and forums could domesticate rivalry. His sentence is a lawyer's blueprint for civility: you can't litigate if neither side recognizes the court, and you can't negotiate if neither side acknowledges the possibility of just outcomes.
The subtext is both caution and strategy. If diplomacy depends on the assumption of justice, then bad-faith actors can exploit it, performing reasonableness while pursuing advantage. At the same time, Root is defending the necessity of the pretense: treat "willingness to do justice" as a baseline, and you create a shared language that can shame, constrain, and sometimes steer states toward outcomes they would resist in a pure contest of strength. It's realism dressed as idealism, because realism still needs paperwork.
The phrase "assumed willingness" is the tell. He isn't praising nations for their moral seriousness; he's diagnosing the fragile premise that keeps negotiations from collapsing into naked power contests. In Root's era - the Hague conferences, arbitration dreams, the uneasy confidence of a rising U.S. - the hope was that rules and forums could domesticate rivalry. His sentence is a lawyer's blueprint for civility: you can't litigate if neither side recognizes the court, and you can't negotiate if neither side acknowledges the possibility of just outcomes.
The subtext is both caution and strategy. If diplomacy depends on the assumption of justice, then bad-faith actors can exploit it, performing reasonableness while pursuing advantage. At the same time, Root is defending the necessity of the pretense: treat "willingness to do justice" as a baseline, and you create a shared language that can shame, constrain, and sometimes steer states toward outcomes they would resist in a pure contest of strength. It's realism dressed as idealism, because realism still needs paperwork.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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