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The ethics of major American foreign policies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Kenneth Thompson
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Extract

The theologian Reinhold Neibuhr oftentimes warned that moralists who entered the foreign policy sphere were likely to be more destructive of a nation's ideals than were cynical realists. Evidently he feared that those who lacked a sense of the limits of foreign policy would proceed as if the values and goods which were attainable in the more intimate communities of the family, the locality and the nation were attainable in the international community as well. Whatever Neibuhr's quarrels and debates with classical Greek thought, he was at one with Plato and Aristotle and their present day followers in believing that justice could be more effectively pursued by the smaller communities, such as the city states. He insisted on a recognition of the differences between such communities and the major present day world powers. From World War II until his death, he wrote more about foreign policy than any other aspect of public policy. He wrote scores of articles, some published in less prominent journals, about American foreign policy and its moral basis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , July 1980 , pp. 111 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1980

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References

page 111 note 1 McGovern, William M., From Luther to Hitler (Boston, 1941), p. 120.Google Scholar

page 000 note 2 Fox's essays in journals such as The Review of Politics have dealt with Niebuhr's approach to the Gold War; Ronald Stone has written an intellectual biography of Niebuhr; Tom F. Driver was an apologist for counter-culture movements in the late 1960's; Shaull has explained liberation theology and Cox is the author of The Secular City.

page 116 note 1 Speech in the Senate, 9 January, 1900, reprinted in Bartlett, Ruhl J., The Record of American Diplomacy (New York, 1964), p. 385.Google Scholar

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page 119 note 2 Ibid., p. 203.

page 120 note 1 President Truman characterized the United Nations as “the cornerstone of American foreign policy” in nearly every speech he made following its creation.

page 121 note 1 For a discussion of the X-article and Kennan's interpretation of it, see Kennan, George F., Memoirs 1925–1950 (Boston, 1967), pp. 354–367.Google Scholar

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page 121 note 3 Paul Nitze and Dean Acheson argued that a universalized response was necessary while George F. Kennan took the opposite view.

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