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Hans Morgenthau and the National Interest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2016

Cornelia Navari
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Extract

Hans Morgenthau's concept of “the national interest” first appeared, somewhat like thunder out of China, in the essay “The Primacy of the National Interest” as part of a forum in the Spring 1949 issue of The American Scholar titled “The National Interest and Moral Principles in Foreign Policy.” As William Scheuerman observes, “The concept of the ‘national interest’ first takes on a special analytic status in this essay.” In the essay, the national interest is first presented as a necessary corrective to what Morgenthau had already characterized in Scientific Man vs. Power Politics as legalism, moralism, and sentimentalism in American politics, and as a more effective guide to foreign policy than the American tradition seemed able to provide.

Type
Roundtable: Morgenthau in America
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , Spring 2016 , pp. 47 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2016 

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References

NOTES

1 The American Scholar is the Phi Beta Kappa magazine; originally for members of the society, it had become a venue for the presentation of intellectual debate on issues of national importance.

2 Morgenthau, Hans J., “The Primacy of the National Interest,” as part of the forum entitled “National Interest and Moral Principles in Foreign Policy,” American Scholar 18, no. 2 (1949), pp. 207–12Google Scholar.

3 William Scheuerman, Hans Morgenthau, Realism and Beyond (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), p. 214, n. 24.

4 The explosion was only announced to the American public by President Truman at the end of September 1949.

5 Scheuerman, Hans Morgenthau, pp. 70–71.

6 Morgenthau, Hans J., “Diplomacy,” Yale Law Journal 55, no. 5 (1946), pp. 1067–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the arguments would be repeated in latter chapters of Politics Among Nations.

7 E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939 (London: Macmillan, 1946), p. 89.

8 Christoph Frei, Hans. J. Morgenthau: An Intellectual Biography (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 2001); Amstrup, Niels, “The Early Morgenthau: A Comment on the Intellectual Origins of Realism,” Cooperation and Conflict 13, no. 2 (1978), pp. 163–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Hans J. Morgenthau, “The Moral Dilemma in Foreign Policy,” The Yearbook of World Affairs, vol. 5 (London: Stevens & Sons, 1951), pp. 12–36.

10 Published just before Politics Among Nations, also by Knopf, Mowrer's book presented international relations in terms of power politics, but in which Americans had to engage to protect their democratic institutions. The Chicago Daily News's foreign correspondent in Europe in the run up to war, he was a social democrat and one of the founders of Americans for Democratic Action, demonstrating the ease with which American liberals could be converted to power politics, so long as power was in the service of good causes.

11 Mowrer, Edgar, “The Inevitable Compromise,” American Scholar 18, no, 3 (1949), p. 376 Google Scholar.

12 The most recent American treatment, Charles Beard's The Idea of National Interest had raised the question as to whether there was any such thing, having argued rather convincingly that American foreign policy had fallen under the sway of sectional interests.

13 Morgenthau, Hans J., “On Negotiating with the Russians,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 6, no. 5 (1950), pp. 143–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, among others. Morgenthau was not the only one who would argue that the bomb made “peace” inevitable; so too did the growing disarmament lobby.

14 Morgenthau, Hans J., “The Mainsprings of American Foreign Policy: The National Interest vs. Moral Abstractions,” American Political Science Review 44, no. 4 (1950), pp. 853–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the first printed version of the first lecture.

15 Hans J. Morgenthau, In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy (New York: Knopf, 1951), p. 139.

16 A. J. P. Taylor, “Ideas and Illusions,” Nation, September 8, 1951, pp. 196–97.

17 The term encompassed Kennan as well Morgenthau, the former of whose account of America's foreign policy, drawn from his own Walgreen Lectures, had appeared, using the idealist/realist distinction to organize the historical material. Suggested by Morgenthau for the 1951 series, Kennan's lectures reflect Morgenthau's influence.

18 A. H. Feller, “In Defense of International Law and Morality,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 282 (July 1952), pp. 78–79; there is a substantial contrary argument, but Morgenthau did not avail himself of it.

19 See esp., American Political Science Review 46, no. 1 (1952), pp. 225–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Morgenthau, Hans J., “Another ‘Great Debate’: The National Interest of the United States,” American Political Science Review 46, no. 4 (1952), pp. 961–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Wolfers, Arnold, “‘National Security’ as an Ambiguous Symbol,” Political Science Quarterly 67, no. 4 (1952), p. 481 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Aron, Raymond, “En quête d'une philosophie de la politique étrangère,” Revue Franςais de Science Politique 3, no. 1 (1953)Google Scholar. Though published in French, the argument was widely discussed, and Morgenthau read French; he remained cool toward Aron for the rest of his life.

23 In a Declaration of September 18, 1951, the Western occupying powers declared that they “regard the government of the Federal Republic of Germany as the only German government freely and legitimately constituted and therefore entitled to speak for the German nation in international affairs,” forestalling any spheres of influence agreement.

24 In Defence of the National Interest, noted in the “Acknowledgments,” p. vii.

25 Jervis, Robert, “Hans Morgenthau, Realism and the Scientific Study of International Relations,” Social Research 61, no. 4 (1994) p. 856 Google Scholar.