I am a realist and a great admirer of the International relations
scholar Hans J Morgenthau. In his book ‘Politics among Nations’ (6th
revised edition) any international act by a state or the president as
actor in the international system act should be both INTELLIGENT and PEACEFUL.
He notes that in the process of executing any international objective there are
four tasks that you have to undertake. The first one is the identification of
your objective. This means that you have to identify and determine for what
purpose you want to engage with another state, intergovernmental organization, execution
of an international treaty or agreements and other instruments that are
available.
The second one is analyzing the objectives of these other parties.
In this instance you ask yourself, what do the other party want to achieve? In
this case the major question was ‘what does International Criminal Court want
to achieve by summoning the president to The Hague’ whiles as the prosecutor
had publicly declared that she had no evidence against him?
The third task that you partake is the examination on compatibility
of objectives. Your objectives and those of the other party, how different or compatible
are they? Can they be achieved at the same time? Will the implementation of one
lead to the neglection of the other. Can the objectives be implemented simultaneously?
Will the execution of one objection lead to vacuumation of the other? This is
another question that the president’s advisors asked themselves.
The last and the most vital task is the task of the identification
of the right means (can also be called instruments) to execute the objective. Do
you honour the summons or not and how? What are the tactics that you use to achieve
your objectives? Do you shed off your presidential status or do you take Kenya to
trial with you? Which one is INTELLIGENT AND PEACEFUL? The president’s advisors
had to carefully read and analyzed the mood of Kenya and Africa. How will his appearance
at The Hague be viewed by the African States (represented by head of governments
and/or heads of states) who had passed a a resolution not to honour any prosecutorial
inclinations executable by the ICC.
For any international engagement to be peaceful and intelligent
it must be executed at the appropriate time and executed appropriately. Herbert
Simons in his satisfycing theory notes that you have to look for appropriate means
to achieve your objectives when faced by conflicting scenarios. It advocates for
an ‘acceptable threshold’ rather than the ‘optimal decision making’. The government
used the first option to arrive in the final resolution.
That is the small and rather theoretical piece that I shared
with my friend, the implementation depended on the government.
Ken Mwangi is the CEO Intellectus Consultancy, a regional think tank on public and social policy.
He is also a Masters student in International Relations and graduate of Political Science and Public Administration from the University of Nairobi
