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The Ethical Dimensions of Diplomacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Kenneth W. Thompson
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Extract

Ancient traditions have stressed the intervention of the gods and contemporary moralists picture God as being on their side in international conflicts. Pharisaism, Manichaeism and the morality of progress are other distortions of political ethics. The first step in a more profound understanding of the ethical dimension of diplomacy is a clear-eyed view of the good and evil in human nature informed by philosophy and history. However, differences exist among political realists and international lawyers who have examined human nature in these terms. Some emphasize the relevance of ethics for international politics while others question it. Democratic foreign policy poses special problems for those who discuss international morality. Such issues are resolved at least partly within the tradition of practical morality which the article considers in conclusion.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , July 1984 , pp. 367 - 387
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1984

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References

1 Bingham, June, Courage to Change: An Introduction to the Life and Thought of Reinhold Niebuhr (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961), p. 62.Google Scholar

2 Quoted in Beales, A. C. F., A Short History of English Liberalism, p. 195.Google Scholar

3 House of Commons Debates, Fifth Series, 1946, Vol. 419, 1262.Google Scholar

4 Frederick, the Great, Origin of the Bismarck Policy, European Pamphlets, vol. 12 (Boston: Crosby, Damrell, 100 Washington Street, 1870), p. 6.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., p. 12.

6 Ibid., p. 21.

7 Ibid., p. 22.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid., p. 23.

10 Ibid., p. 43.

11 Ibid., p. 48.

12 Ibid., pp. 48–49.

13 Ibid., p. 50.

14 Ibid., p. 51.

15 SirNicolson, Harold, Diplomacy (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), p. 50.Google Scholar

16 Quoted in Ibid., pp. 45–46.

17 Ibid., p. 76.

18 Quotations from Morgenthau, Kennan, Halle and Jessup are taken from unpublished papers written for a conference on “Morality and Foreign Policy” held in Charlottesville, Virginia, in June 1977, and jointly sponsored by the Department of State and the University of Virginia.

19 Ibid.