“Calculation is the life blood of politics,” writes Ernest W. Lefever, “and the heart of ethics” (The Ethics of Calculation,” Worldview, October, italics added). This statement should be subjected to thorough scrutiny, and searchingly criticized.

Indeed, calculation is the heart of ethics as Mr. Lefever understands it. For this reason, there is for him no particular difficulty about making ethicopolitical judgements; and there is little to disturb or limit the “moral-political calculations” of which he speaks, since the heart of morality was already assumed to be calculative. Research the facts and weigh them properly: this is about all that is needed in politics; and, happily, also about all it is the business of ethics to do.

As one of a non-religious (some of my friends might consider it an anti-religious) bent, it has always seemed to me impossibly difficult to deal with questions of war and statecraft as moral problems. If we are thinking of “war” in the abstract, we are thinking of one of the ugly facts of life—an institution which has characterized human society from time immemorial, and which, like many other ugly facts of life, is in itself morally neutral. Like pain, pestilence or natural disaster, it presents a problem to the moralist; but the moralist can say nothing to those involved in war's agonies and cruel decisions.

The government of Pnompenh has suddenly decided to break diplomatic relations with that of Bangkok. This gesture concludes a long quarrel which had scarcely broken out during the period of the French protectorate of Cambodia.

Siam, now Thailand, used to consider Cambodia a vassal state, and for a long time all the diplomatic latitude that was allowed the Kings of Cambodia by their two powerful neighbors, the Emperor of Annam and the King of Siam, was the privilege of acknowledging themselves, in turn, as proteges of the one in order to fight the other.

In his article “Morality and Modern War,” published last December, John Courtney Murray anatomized several of the central elements of the problem—and he did it in his characteristically clear and coolheaded way. Beyond this, he argued that there is a sane middle ground between the extremes of pacifism and bellicism, and that the health of the nations demand that they occupy this middle ground. I have no inclination to part company with Father Murray's judiciousness and perceptiveness, in order to traffic either with sentimentalists or with cynics, with those who piously believe that love can dispense with force or with those who scornfully believe that love, and even justice, merely complicate the efficient and decisive use of force in pursuit of national self-interest. Accordingly the questions which I raise here reflect, I hope, great sympathy for the stabilizing and moderating claims of reason, whose voice is too seldom and too impatiently heard in the land in our troubled times.

The immediate day-to-day foreign policy decisions which are facing us are on issues that are largely of other people's making. Beyond them there is another level where we might move ahead and try to give greater force to our ideas and to our ideals. It is here that we should be looking for action that will connect with our long-range objectives. The path here, as I see it, is to try to develop certain common interests, which may start out on a limited basis but can ultimately develop into worldwide interests.

Last May George F. Kennan in The Atlantic (“Foreign Policy and Christian Conscience”) had some advice for moralists concerned with nuclear weapons and international politics. Much of his advice is good. He warns against “pouring Christian enthusiasm into unsuitable vessels † designed to contain the earthly calculations of practical politicians.” His lucid statement on the limits of the United Nations and foreign economic aid can help provide the basis for morally responsible support of these widely misunderstood foreign policy instruments. His comments on the moral ambiguities in the colonialism issue are timely.

War ceased to be a logical enterprise when it passed beyond the simple dimensions of aggression and defense. There was indeed a perverse logic in the actions of those who took up arms in order to seize what did not belong to them—the logic of the criminal; and certainly there was a logical basis for the reaction of those attacked when they decided, to meet force with force and refused to give up what was rightfully theirs.