Do Morals Matter?

The author is former Dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and has been recently ranked as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy. The book's subject could not be more topical to current world affairs both in reviewing past performance and formulating ethical criteria for future assessment. The introduction discusses the roots of American moralism, exceptionalism and the origins of the liberal international order after 1945 in Woodrow Wilson. The author questions the cynical outlook that good is to be equated with national interest and advances a three-dimensional review that good moral reasoning should weigh and balance 'the intentions, the means, and the consequences of presidents' decisions', which enables him to construct a comparative scorecard (p. 37) for the fourteen incumbents under consideration. He introduces further useful distinctions for instance between Weber's ethics of conviction and ethics of responsibility. He notes that 'the amount and type of lying makes a difference in terms of effects on credibility, trust, and institutions.' (!) He discusses the relative balance in relation to hard and soft power between realism, cosmopolitanism and liberalism, also in relation to interventions in other countries. Whatever the circumstances, the author highlights the importance of 'contextual intelligence' for the framing of an ethical foreign policy.

The coverage is historical, classifying presidents under the headings of founders, the Vietnam era, post-Vietnam retrenchment, the end of the Cold War, the unipolar moment, and 21^st-century power shifts. While the challenges facing presidents evolve with history, the possibility of ethical foreign policy is always present, sometimes undermined by the tension between official policy and covert intervention. The role of influential bodies such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group is not mentioned, nor is the centrality of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in the late 1990s, although the circumstances surrounding the 2003 Iraq invasion are thoroughly covered. The chapter on Trump highlights both continuities and discontinuities with the past, and his report card is mainly mixed or poor. Going forward, the author sees a horizontal shift with the rise of Asia, especially China, and a complex vertical shift driven by technology – and many of our key challenges will require cooperation, a combination of strong national identity with global concern – power with as well as power over. It will be a delicate balancing act, and this highly informed book will be a key reference point for the formulation of ethical foreign policy in the future.