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Statesmanship and Moral Choice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Arnold Wolfers
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Extract

Throughout the ages moralists have expressed horror at the way princes and sovereign states behave toward each other. Behavior which would be considered immoral by any standard can obviously be detected in all realms of life; but nowhere does the contradiction between professed ethical principles and actual behavior appear so patent and universal as in the conduct of foreign relations. Governments spy on each other and lie to each other; they violate pledges and conduct wars, often at the cost of millions of lives and untold misery. No wonder, then, that in western democracies if not elsewhere indignation over such practices should be voiced with vehemence. In our day it frequently expresses itself in wholesale denunciations of the multi-state system on the ground that sovereign states cannot deal with each other except by the use of immoral means, derogatorily called power politics. Some draw the cynical conclusion that morality has no place in international politics, while others would have men fulfill their moral duty by substituting world government for the present immoral political system.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , January 1949 , pp. 175 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1949

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References

1 One might question whether Machiavelli meant to draw a sharp distinction between the ethics of state behavior, the behavior of “princes,” which was his main concern, and the ethics of individual behavior. In the same Chapter XV of The Prince, in which he advises the sovereign to learn “how not to be good,” he also speaks generally of the condition of man, saying that “whoever abandons what is done for what ought to be done will rather learn to bring about his own ruin than his preservation.” He goes on to say that such a man “must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good.”

2 Friedrich Meinecke's Die Idee der Staatsräson, Munich and Berlin, 1925, is a classic study of the relations between ethics and power politics as seen by Machiavelli and his continental disciples down to Treitschke. No similar study has been written on the views of their Anglo-Saxon contemporaries, though Ritter, Gerhard, in Machtstaat und Utopie, Munich and Berlin, 1914Google Scholar, makes a suggestive beginning to such a study. He contrasts Machiavelli, “pioneer of the continental power state,” with Thomas More, “ideological father of the English insular welfare state”—the former setting power above morality (p. 31), the latter seeking the “Ethisierung und Entdämonisierung der Macht” (p. 89).

3 Morgenthau, While Hans J. in Scientific Man vs. Power Politics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1946Google Scholar, declares that “No civilization can be satisfied with … a dual morality” (p. 179), Hocking, William Ernest, The Spirit of World Politics, New York, Macmillan, 1932Google Scholar, writes that statesmen distrust public opinion in international affairs because the public “takes for granted that the codes (for individuals and for states) are the same.” Carr, E. H., The Twenty Years’ Crisis, London, Macmillan, 1940Google Scholar, in contrast to these authors asserts that most people, while believing that states ought to act morally, do not expect of them the same kind of moral behavior which they expect of themselves and of one another (p. 199).

4 Morgenthau, Hans J., op. cit., p. 189.Google Scholar

5 See Weber's, Max “Politics as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, New York, Oxford University Press, 1946, pp. 120 ff.Google Scholar

6 Weber's, Max “ethic of responsibility,” (op. cit., pp. 118 ff.)Google Scholar comes closer to what is here described as a non-perfectionist ethic of maximization of value than it might appear from some of his statements. Weber, it is true, declares that “from no ethics in the world can it be concluded when and to what extent the ethically good purpose ‘justifies’ the ethically dangerous means and ramification” (p. 121). He is here taking issue with the revolutionary fanatic who from the point of view of an “ethic of ultimate ends” considers every act of violence justified so long as it serves his ultimate end. But when Weber goes on to demand of men that they hold themselves responsible for the consequences of their acts, especially their acts of violence, he does not refute their moral right to “contract with the diabolic powers of violence” which as political men they must do, but implicitly calls on them to choose the road which will minimize the evil consequences for which they bear responsibility.

7 Hans J. Morgenthau, op. cit., following in the footsteps of Max Weber, also emphasizes the “ethical paradoxes” of politics. “Political ethics,” he says, “is indeed the ethics of doing evil” (p. 202). Yet he too concludes that “it is moral judgment,” meaning presumably the best a man can morally do “to choose among several expedient actions the least evil one” (p. 203).

8 See Ratzenhofer, Gustav, Wesen und Zweck der Politik, Leipzig, 1893.Google Scholar

9 Schmitt, Carl, in Der Begriff des Politischen, Munich, 1932Google Scholar, modifies Ratzenhofer's thesis by declaring that inter-state and, in fact, all truly political relations are in the nature of “friend-foe” relations. While he does not claim that relations between all states at all times are inevitably hostile, he maintains that nations always group themselves as friends and foes and that, there could be no such thing as statehood or politics if it were not for the existence of potential enmity, by which he means the possibility of deadly physical combat.

10 Some writers while agreeing that the ethical problems of political and private life are basically the same nevertheless stress the difference, if only quantitative, which makes international power politics the domain of evil par excellence. In his earlier works Reinhold Niebuhr stresses the peculiar selfishness and immorality of human communities including the state, as indicated by the title of his book, Moral Man and Immoral Society, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936. Later, however, he places more emphasis on the fact that all life is a “contest of power” and that international war and conflict are but a revelation of the general character of human existence and human sinfulness. (See his Christianity and Power Politics, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940, especially pages 11, 12, and 103.)

11 Adler, Mortimer, How To Think About War And Peace, New York, Simon and Shuster, 1944Google Scholar, declares anarchy to be the only cause of war and defines anarchy as “the condition of those who try to live without government.” (p. 69).

12 Churchill, Winston, The Gathering Storm, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1948, p. 320Google Scholar, testifies admirably to these opportunities for statesmanship. He says “those who are prone by temperament and character to seek sharp and clear-cut solutions of difficult and obscure problems, who are ready to fight whenever some challenge comes from a foreign Power, have not always been right. On the other hand, those whose inclination is to bow their heads, to seek patiently and faithfully for peaceful compromise, are not always wrong. On the contrary, in the majority of instances they may be right, not only morally but from a practical standpoint. How many wars have been averted by patience and persisting good will”

13 Nicolson, Harold, The Congress of Vienna, London, Constable, 1946, p. 236.Google Scholar

14 It is not surprising that authors who believe that international politics is essentially a struggle for national survival should reach very pessimistic ethical conclusions. Thus, Spykman, Nicholas J., America's Strategy in World Politics, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1942Google Scholar, bases his case on the proposition that “the struggle for power is identical with the struggle for survival” and that states can survive only by constant devotion to power politics. Although the use of power “should be constantly subjected to moral judgments” (p. 12), Spykman concludes that the “statesman can concern himself with values of justice, fairness and tolerance only to the extent that they contribute to or do not interfere with the power objective,” meaning the quest for survival. In his further statement that the quest for power is not made for “the achievement of moral values” he is taking issue with those exponents of nationalistic ethics who place supreme moral value on national survival. See also in this connection Mortimer Adler's statement that “so long as national self-preservation remains the dominant end for which prudence must choose means, the principles of morality cannot be reconciled with the counsels of prudence.” (op. cit., p. 78)

15 MacIver, R. M., The Web of Governlment, New York, Macmillan, 1947Google Scholar, suggests that these basic value judgments may change as the old myths of national sovereignty and national interests lose their grip on people, while Toynbee, Arnold, A Study of History, New York and London, Oxford University Press, 1947 (p. 299)Google Scholar, passing moral judgment, denounces the “pagan worship of sovereign nation-states” calling it a monstrous product of the impact of parochialism on the Western Christian Church.” See, in this connection, also Lasswell, Harold, World Politics and Personal Insecurity, New York and London, McGraw-Hill, 1935Google Scholar, who devotes Chapter XI, “In Quest of a Myth: The Problem of World Unity,” to the problem of how, by the use of symbols, myths, and other practices, human value judgments might be changed in favor of world unity.

16 See Winnacker, Rudolph A., “Yalta—Another Munich?” in The Firginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Autumn, 1948), pp. 521–37.Google Scholar