Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:11:35.158Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Moral Reasoning in American Thought on War and Peace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Kenneth W. Thompson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is said by some observers of politics and foreign policy that morality has nothing to do with the vital issues of national and international politics. Experienced practitioners note that seldom if ever are moral issues invoked in serious policy discussions; politics and foreign policy are a practical art in which interest and power prevail. Others take issue with this view claiming that from its history America has derived a high responsibility unique among states to stand for certain moral ends and purposes. From its history it has been a nation set apart; its place in the world is dependent on faithfulness to its founding creed embodied in the Declaration of Independence and other statements down to the Atlantic Charter.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , July 1977 , pp. 386 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Cyrus Vance in an interview at a televised press conference at which his appointment as secretary of state was announced.

2 Some of Niebuhr's, most important books are: The Nature and Destiny of Man, 2 vols.Google Scholar; The Children of Light and Darkness; Faith and History; Moral Man and Immoral Society; The Irony of American History; The Self and the Dramas of History; Christianity and Power Politics; Christian Realism and Political Problems; Pious and Secular America; Love and Justice; and The Structure of Nations and Empires.

3 Niebuhr, Sermon at Union Seminary, New York, May 10, 1960.

4 Quoted in Bingham, June, Courage to Change (New York, 1961), p. 12Google Scholar.

5 Morgenthau's writings, as Niebuhr's, are voluminous and include contributions both in political theory and foreign policy; cf., Scientific Man vs. Power Politics; In Defense of the National Interest; Principles and Problems of International Politics; The Purpose of American Politics; Dilemmas of Politics; A New Foreign Policy for the United States; and Politics in the Twentieth Century.

6 Morgenthau, , Politics among Nations, 2nd ed. (New York, 1954)Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., p. 30.

8 Ibid., p. 189.

9 See Pound, , Philosophical Theory and International Law (Leyden, 1923), 1:74Google Scholar.

10 Morgenthau, , Politics among Nations, p. 196Google Scholar.

11 Quoted in Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr, Early Writings, Walter Lippmann (New York, 1970), p. 71Google Scholar.

12 Ibid., pp. 88–89.

13 Kennan, , American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (Chicago, 1951), p. 93Google Scholar.

14 Kennan, Address at Princeton Theological Seminary (reprinted in Atlantic [May, 1959], p. 100).