Politics Among Nations

When considering the influence of ethics and morality on international relations, it is important to distinguish between the moral rules that people follow and the moral rules that intellectuals believe people should follow. Morgenthau also warns against forgetting that moralistic ideologies can be used to conceal actual goals. Still, he refutes the idea that international relations are inevitably evil, contending that politicians will “refuse to consider certain ends and […] certain means […] because certain moral rules interpose an absolute barrier” (249).

The Protection of Human Life

Methods like assassination, which was often considered by the Republic of Venice in the 15th and 16th centuries, have become less common in modern times. When the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States attempted assassinations, these incidents gave rise to negative reactions from the American public due to the CIA’s “violation of moral restraints” (250).

After the Thirty Years War, which took place in the 17th century, the concept of war shifted from an all-out attack on all inhabitants in a territory to an attempt to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. This shift was cemented in a series of treaties and international agreements such as the Geneva Convention. While the treaties may not have been entirely effective, they still represent “the existence of a moral conscience aware of moral limitations” (255).

In recent centuries, politicians have sought to end war itself. The United Nations is an attempt to find an alternative to war through negotiation. However, Morgenthau suggests that this attitude has been a detriment, especially given that the participating nations avoided wars that might have prevented World War II.

However, despite growing anti-war sentiment and historical changes in how war has been conducted, war became “total” in the 20th century due to modern changes in military tactics and technology. Modern wars have targeted civilians who are involved in industrial production and scientific research for the war effort. Additionally, as the number of weapons of mass destruction has increased, more civilians have been inadvertently affected by war. The breakdown in the moral restrictions on warfare became especially apparent in World War II.

Universal Morality Vs. Nationalistic Universalism

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the subject of morality in international relations became the concern of a small political elite: specifically, monarchs and “a relatively small, cohesive, and homogenous group of aristocratic rulers” who were alienated from the average people of their own nations (260). During this time frame, morality in international relations was preserved by concerns over losing honor and prestige.

Aristocratic diplomacy declined in the 19th century as democratic governments took power. As a result, more diplomats were career politicians who were accountable to representative bodies like parliaments. One negative consequence was that foreign policy has become more unstable, with newly elected governments sometimes radically changing foreign policies. The author also contends that as international relations have become less personal, moral restrictions are proving to be less effective; although the voters of a nation are the ultimate deciders of foreign policy, they are not held accountable in the way that monarchs and aristocratic ministers once were.

As a consequence of the decline of aristocratic governments, the sense of European unity that came from “cosmopolitan aristocratic society” collapsed and was replaced by national rivalries (266). Rather than becoming new sources of unity, socialist activism and religion became involved with individual nations. Also, moral standards in international relations are now seen as belonging to specific nations, rather than being shared across an international community.

Morgenthau argues that European international relations has historically been sandwiched between a more universal morality and a more localized form of national ethics (e.g., a moral ban on killing in general versus specific and situational restrictions on killing a nation’s enemies). Generally, people choose “national ethics” over universal morality. This trend has strengthened as modern propaganda and nationalism have enabled governments to influence individual morality. Likewise, new military technology has made it easier for soldiers to kill large numbers of people with a single action. These issues make it more difficult for an individual to reconcile universal morality with national ethics.

In the modern era, nations no longer have “shared beliefs and common values” (271). Instead, each nation has a separate ethical system. This was seen when World War I became viewed as a “war ‘to make the world safe for democracy’” (272). Likewise, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany embraced the systems of communism and fascism, respectively. Although wars in previous eras were explicitly fought over “glory,” “wealth,” and “power,” wars in the modern era are ostensibly fought to protect a “system of beliefs and ethical convictions” (273).

A type of “relativism” exists in modern international relations. There are two types of relativism: one across different eras of history and one across different nations with different values. There has been some effort to create universal values between nations via the concept of human rights. However, human rights vary according to time and place (e.g., the difference between human rights under a democracy and under a dictatorship).

Ever since President Woodrow Wilson of the United States tried to restructure the international order after World War I, there was a shift in the core US policy toward enforcing democratic values and human rights on the rest of the world. Morgenthau views this approach as flawed. He believes that it is impossible to “enforce[e] the universal application of human rights” (276), and he also contends that an agenda of spreading human rights can contradict the United States’ other foreign-policy objectives.

Any foreign policy that is based on defending human rights faces problems, given that human rights are “not the prime business of a state” and can clash with other aspects of diplomacy (277). Another problem arises from the fact that nations that have committed to human rights in their foreign policies make themselves susceptible to blame when these policies have unintended human-rights consequences. A prime example occurred when the United States’ treatment of Cambodia during the Vietnam War was cited as the reason for the Cambodian genocide that took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The League of Nations was established to create a vehicle for expressing world public opinion. However, past attempts to rally world opinion against a nation’s foreign policy all failed. Such failures result from the fact that public opinion on international relations varies greatly between the “publics” of different nations.

Psychological Unity of the World

Morgenthau believes that people universally desire freedom and self-fulfillment. The objectives of freedom and fulfillment are the same across cultures, but the philosophical and ethical ways of achieving them vary widely.

Ambiguity of Technological Unification

The author asserts that contrary to what some believe, technology has not unified the world even though it has vastly facilitated communications. However, at the same time, technology has made it easier for governments and private entities to censor international communications. Even without censorship as a factor, national and cultural differences have too much of an influence over opinions and perspectives for there to ever truly be a world public opinion.

The Barrier of Nationalism

Although President Wilson’s “Fourteen Points” was well received, differences based on national divisions soon arose, preventing the meaning of the Fourteen Points from being universally interpreted. These divisions exist even in the context of politicians’ universal aspirations, such as avoiding war. Abstract, universal principles, such as the desire for peace, often break down when they are translated into practical actions and used to address specific situations. This disconnect often leads to moral condemnations of actions that are deemed to be less than “effective” (286).