Raison d’etat is, simply put, the good of the state. The reflexive algorithm of foreign policy, that is of dealing with the outside world, is still to follow the interests of one’s own country. This is the default doctrine of any country’s foreign policy. The most rudimentary and convincing. A truly autotelic value.

Raison d’etat entered the political lexicon with the formation of the modern paradigm of international relations based on the national interest.

The authorship of the concept itself is attributed to the Archbishop of Benevento, Giovanni della Casa, a sixteenth-century writer and poet, expert in etiquette and good manners. The conceptual framework of raison d’état was established by Nicolo Machiavelli, and the first to apply it in practice (and on a grand scale) was Cardinal de Richelieu, the architect of French foreign policy in the 17th century. For Richelieu, it became a handy explanation of Catholic France’s support of the Protestant camp in the Thirty Years’ War. The desire to weaken the Catholic Habsburgs was stronger than religious solidarity. With time, raison d’etat became a standing cliché to explain even the most controversial moves of countries on the international arena.

The term is quite abstract, highly intuitive, and very situational. It stands for making political decisions guided by the overriding state interest, the national interest. It excludes motivating one’s actions with personal, family, dynastic, tribal, religious, party or ideological considerations. It is related to the postulate of rejecting emotions and pursuing realistic assessments in the process of decision-making. It remains a vague, elusive factor that changes over time. Too often, in the past, it has been invoked to conceal real motives for action, introduce an element of secrecy in the decision-making process, exclude the possibility of debating the rightness of decisions made, sometimes to reject compromises, and sometimes to justify unpopular deals.

The raison d’état doctrine revolutionized the foreign policy of states and became one of the attributes of the Westphalian international order.

Raison d’etat is seen as a sublime of national interests, the strategic framework of these interests, the superior interest of the state. In the Westphalian model of relations, the international interest of the state has become the ultimate criterion for evaluating foreign policy, even when it comes to altruism or sacrifice.

The interest of the state is often equated with the interest of the nation (as a social construct). In existentially extreme situations, they are not the same. As President Beneš used to say: the survival of the nation is more important than that of the state.

In 2011-2014, as part of my duties as Head of the Policy Planning Directorate of the Secretariat of the Council of Europe, I provided support to the European network of schools of political studies and civic education. I visited them often, gave presentations, held debates. I went to Pristina once. It would seem that the most appropriate topic there would be to discuss new concepts of building an effective, efficient and smart state. I prepared a solid lecture showing the evolution of the state’s role, the growing tension in state-citizen relations, and ideas for reshaping the state model. However, I had an overwhelming impression that my story did not overwhelm the audience (incidentally, an audience of young, dynamic, well-educated people, knowing languages but frustrated with the situation in their country and the attitude of the ruling elite). An explanation (I would like to assume that it was a meant in a provocative spirit) was presented to me discreetly by one of the participants: “Nationalism in our country makes us treat our state as a temporary product, a necessary necessity to get out of “Serbian domination”, a form of political correctness to ensure the sympathy of the USA and the West, because in fact, we want a reunification” (implicitly: with the rest of the Albanian nation).

Indeed, an independent state is not always a strategic goal. It was not a value in itself, among others, for many East Germans at the end of the GDR existence, for a large group of Moldovans after the collapse of the USSR, for most Austrians after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1918. But these are exceptional situations in the history of political relations.

The overriding interest of the state has been associated primarily with ensuring the sovereignty of the state, its territorial integrity, the security of the state and its citizens, as well as maintaining the national identity. The state had the right to take any, sometimes extraordinary, measures and to exclude those measures from moral evaluation. An interesting phenomenon in the recent years is the expansion of the concept of security to include the identity and cultural factor. There are politicians, at least in several countries, including European ones, who believe that the defence against the imposition of the so-called foreign civilization values constitute an important element of security policy. They want to protect the nation from moral evil, the weakening of the traditional family model and the so-called gender ideology.

Indeed, the term security itself is getting more and more stretchy, abstract, and subjective. We treat as axiomatic terms such as energy, raw material, economic, ecological and information security. For some time now, talking about security has been about more than the purely physical and political survival of the state. Mass (and uncontrolled) migrations have highlighted the importance of cultural security. But the fears associated with it are cynically exploited in domestic politics. The cultural raison d’etat was appropriated by populists.

Raison d’etat is always determined by the foreign policy decision-maker. The rulers may argue with the political opposition about how to understand it, they may even have different perceptions of it. Even constitutional institutions of power may disagree how to interpret it (such as was the case when the Sejm and Senate in Poland had opposing views whether linking the disbursement of the so-called EU reconstruction fund in 2021 with the state of the rule of law was consistent or not with the Polish raison d’etat), but the final decision of the decision-maker is always decisive. We optimistically assume that the decision-maker defines raison d’état in a rational, objective manner, devoid of emotions and personal considerations. We know from history that this is not always the case. The margin of appreciation is undoubtedly much greater in foreign policy matters than in domestic policy matters.
Raison d’etat is always defined on the basis of the actual shape of reality, but in foreign policy the perception of this state is more important than reality itself. Hence the fear of the unforeseen consequences of the decisions being made. Much greater than in the case of domestic politics.

The meaning of raison d’état has been extended to include economic interests, the postulate of ensuring the well-being of citizens, and the defence of the state’s prestige. In ancient (pre-Westphalian) times, when the honour of the ruler (state) was an important driver of state behaviour, its defence was an obvious raison d’état. Today, when a certain Western leader (a member of NATO) sends the leader of another large Western country (also a NATO member) for psychiatric treatment and expresses the hope that the nation of that country will get rid of its leader, wars, fortunately, do not break out of it anymore. And the leader, the object of invectives, even writes a warm letter to their author. Because state interests require it.

But elsewhere, it can happen that a mocking caricature of a leader in a neighbouring country’s tabloid newspaper can lead to the cancellation of a multilateral summit. So there are still states where defence of the prestige of a leader and the honour of the state are inextricably linked with raison d’état. And still there it is believed that “there is only one thing in the lives of people, nations and states that is priceless. That thing is honour. “
Once, after a rather long and tense negotiation session, in which I had to insist alone on certain wording in the final document, one of the opposing negotiators approached me. “Do you know what they always said about your countrymen?” – He asked. “Well, I don’t know,” I admitted. “Eh, Poliaki: bolshe chesti, chem uma.” It hurt and it didn’t hurt.

Prestige is treated today more and more often as a degraded vital interest.

Raison d’état reflects not only the understanding of but also the hierarchy of interests. Because there are primary and secondary interests. Interestingly, if years ago, the secondary interests included, for example, the protection of the interests of state citizens (the state has always stood before the citizen), then today the effectiveness of security policy is also measured by the ability to ensure the safety of a citizen in the strict sense and to protect his interests. There are permanent and temporary, general and specific, complementary and conflicting interests. The great advantage of the paradigm of interests in international relations is that interests are negotiable and pliable.
The challenge for a politician remains to define rightly the hierarchy of reasons, to find the overriding factor in a situation where various state interests overlap or even conflict with each other. In my diplomatic practice, the first serious case where divergent arguments required political tie-breaking judgement were the negotiations on the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE).

They were conducted in Vienna from March 1989 in a dynamically changing geopolitical environment (I was the deputy head of the Polish delegation at these negotiations; it was headed by ambassador Włodzimierz Konarski). The concept of the agreement was based on block ceilings for armaments, with parity for the Warsaw Pact and NATO. It was developed when the Warsaw Pact seemed to be a permanent entity. In the summer of 1990, the raison d’etat of Polish policy was unequivocally to break free from satellite ties, open up prospects for future integration with the West, including entry to NATO. The CFE Treaty, in the formula in which it was negotiated, confirmed our membership in the group of the Warsaw Pact countries. The mechanisms of the Treaty, even assuming that the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact was politically unavoidable, forced us to cooperate within the group of states that we wanted to quit, and gave the USSR an indirect possibility of influencing Poland’s military policy. On the other hand, however, a change in the concept, for example for the so-called national ceilings, as provided by the concept being negotiated during the so-called adaptation of the Treaty in 1999, it would risk overturning the entire negotiating process. The West, and especially the Americans, completely opposed any thought of changing the concept. The prospect of a drastic reduction in the conventional potential of the USSR, which was to be opened by the Treaty, was for them an indisputable priority. The Americans decided that everything should be done in order not to waste the opportunity. The Treaty was to be signed on November 19, 1990 at the summit in Paris.
The Americans, concerned that the negotiations might get bogged down in endless technical discussions, decided to accelerate the process. Indeed, at the end of September 1990, approximately 40% of the final text was legally verified and agreed. If, on top of that, one added provisions that could have passed as ready for agreement at the technical level, no more than two-thirds of the treaty could be considered at that time as agreed. It could be assumed that the usual intensification of work on the final stretch could result in reaching an agreement on time. But the Americans decided not to take any chances. They took advantage of the visit to the US of the Head of the Soviet delegation, Ambassador Oleg Grinievskij at the beginning of October, and began to negotiate the treaty bilaterally. The last difficult, and for the Soviets the most difficult issues (regarding verification), were resolved in the second half of October 1990 in a room of the New York hotel Waldorf Astoria by Lynn Hansen (then deputy head of the American delegation) and Gennady Yevstafiev (the “gray eminence” of the Soviet delegation). Just by the two of them.

The bilaterally agreed treaty was presented by the Americans and the Soviets to the remaining 20 countries participating in the negotiations in Vienna. In fact, the Americans took on the entire burden of the show. Also towards most of the Warsaw Pact group. It was a take-it-or-leave-it offer. We were simply given four weeks to translate the text into our national languages and obtain the appropriate approval from the government authorities to initial it. Poland (supported by Hungary and Czechoslovakia) tried to ease the block clauses until the end. Paradoxically, the US (and not the Warsaw Pact bloc) became our main channel of influencing the agreements. The Head of the American delegation, Ambassador Robert James Woolsey (he served later in 1992-1995 as the head of the CIA), with all his political (and private) sympathy for us, could not help us much. We managed to introduce some provisions into the preamble (which confirmed our right to leave the existing alliance and join another), but the Treaty’s framework parameters were not altered. And we were left alone to solve our dilemmas by ourselves, determining what was our overriding reason of state. We accepted the Treaty, which was a political mirror of the past from which we wanted to free ourselves, in the name of building a military security environment that would open up the possibility of radical reconstruction of the whole of Europe security environment.

The doctrine of raison d’état has aroused and continues to arouse various interpretative disputes.

First of all, there is a growing disagreement over who is to define raison d’état. As mentioned, it is assumed that such right is vested in legitimate state institutions that are empowered to conduct foreign policy. But what if they lose their democratic legitimacy and the right to interpret the raison d’état is widely questioned? Does a leader, such as Lukashenko after the rigged elections in 2020, have the right to maintain a monopoly on defining the raison d’état even in relations with Russia? What is the legitimacy (and legality) of the new integration arrangements that he made, for example, with regard to Moscow?

Another issue, how is the overriding raison d’etat to be interpreted in relation to other values, e.g. the survival of the nation or even the entire human civilization? Awareness of interdependence is growing. The concept of coexistent interests has long been invented. What, for example, if the interest of the state collides with the interest of the civilization (the case of the use of nuclear weapons even in self-defence)?

Each state, even the most peripheral, has its share in the universal interests of the international community. The progress of integration projects, especially the European one, may put particular and regional interests on a collision course. What about raison d’état if a national interest collides with a regional (integration) interest? More than once, not twice, members of the European Union (not only the net payers) have to explain to the society that, in the name of the raison d’état, they have given priority to the common good of integration at the expense of the immediate national benefit. What if the national interest collides with the interests of close partners (e.g. Nord Stream and the interests of Germany and Poland)? Does the reason of state have the right to be a selfish, particular reason that harms other partners?

In the Westphalian model of international relations, the international philosophy of states is utilitarianism: maximizing benefits, minimizing losses. It is reflected in the prevailing tribal ethics, commonly known in Poland in Poland as the so-called Kali’s morality. But the interdependencies of the modern world dictate the requirement to take into account the interests of other partners. Even Metternich linked the strength of the state with the ability to harmonize its own interests with those of its partners. He associated narrow minded interests with myopia and impatience.

A serious dilemma relates to how firm and indisputable is raison d’etat in a dynamically changing international environment. Doesn’t relying on it blindly makes foreign policy inert? And if the raison d’état becomes highly plastic, doesn’t it become an expression of opportunism?

Another pertinent question is how broad in substance is the notion of raison d’état. Should it also cover the matters of the internal system and the internal policy of the state? Relations between internal affairs and foreign policy are becoming more and more dense and, with time, the precise distinction between the internal and external dimensions cannot be easily determined.

And finally, should raison d’etat always and everywhere be free from moral judgment?

Raison d’etat that ignores the factor of interdependence inevitably leads to nationalism. Nationalism practised in solitude is undoubtedly a doctrine that mobilizes tribal sentiments and cements public support. Populism feeds on it. But when practised universally and by all actors of international politics, it can become a real bane. The nation-state as a political concept began to gain strength in the mid-nineteenth century. It needed nationalism as an ideological glue. Nationalism is a manifestation of national consciousness and identity. For years, attempts have been made to screen out evil, aggressive nationalism (chauvinism) from progressive nationalism (patriotism). Not always effectively.

The primacy of national thinking over supranational or cosmopolitan thinking will continue in the foreseeable future. National thinking is especially a natural reflex in difficult and crisis times. Because it is easier for us to endure sacrifices when we feel we belong to a national group.

The concept of national interest is evolving just like raison d’état. Increasingly, it takes into account that ensuring the state of affairs necessary to meet the needs of the nation (both material and cultural, as well as operational and aspirational) cannot be done selfishly, let alone in isolation from everything else.

Raison d’état in foreign policy has become “obvious”, self-evident. Referring to it in specific cases lost, however, the power to convince about the rightness of the decisions made.

The “sovereign human individual” will treat the raison d’état with increasing suspicion, if not distrust. The reference to it will be interpreted as evidence that the decision-maker is unwilling or unable to reveal the real motives for the behaviour. And he/she does not do it in the interests of the common citizen. We will need a more sophisticated beacon.