[lit-ideas] Re: Motive, and the quality of foreign policy
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 03:32:58 -0700 (PDT)
One could hardly draw general conclusions about
politics and statesmanship from one example, i.e.
Chamberlain and Churchill, however often it is
invoked. What of the US policy toward the Soviet Union
and the Communist China, for example ? Apart from a
couple of military adventures like Korea and Vietnam,
where the US faired rather poorly, much of the US
policy toward the Communist block could be described
as appeasement. It seems also that these policies were
more successful than starting a nuclear war.
Also, while you may find historical examples of
leaders who were personally virtous but bad or
unsuccessful statesmen, there is no shortage of
leaders who were NOT personally virtous and were also
bad statesmen.
O.K.
--- Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Page 6 of Politics Among Nations, Morgenthau
> writes, "History shows no
> exact and necessary correlation between the quality
> of motives and the
> quality of foreign policy. This is true in both
> moral and political terms.
>
>
>
> "We cannot conclude from the good intentions of a
> statesman that his foreign
> policies will be either morally praiseworthy or
> politically successful.
> Judging his motives, we can say that he will not
> intentionally pursue
> policies that are morally wrong, but we can say
> nothing about the
> probability of their success. If we want to know
> the moral and political
> qualities of his actions, we must know them, not his
> motives. How often
> have statesmen been motivated by the desire to
> improve the world, and ended
> by making it worse? And how often have they sought
> one goal, and ended by
> achieving something they neither expected nor
> desired?
>
>
>
> "Neville Chamberlain's politics of appeasement were,
> as far as we can judge,
> inspired by good motives; he was probably less
> motivated by considerations
> of personal power than were many other British prime
> ministers, and he
> sought to preserve peace and to assure the happiness
> of all concerned. Yet
> his policies helped to make the Second World War
> inevitable, and to bring
> untold miseries to millions of people. Sir Winston
> Churchill's motives, on
> the other hand, were much less universal in scope
> and much more narrowly
> directed toward personal and national power, yet the
> foreign policies that
> sprang from these inferior motives were certainly
> superior in moral and
> political quality to those pursued by his
> predecessor. Judged by his
> motives, Robespierre was one of the most virtuous
> men who ever lived. Yet
> it was the utopian radicalism of that very virtue
> that made him kill those
> less virtuous than himself, brought him to the
> scaffold, and destroyed the
> revolution of which he was a leader.
>
>
>
> "Good motives give assurance against deliberately
> bad polices; they do not
> guarantee the moral goodness and political success
> of the polices they
> inspire. What is important to know, if one wants to
> understand foreign
> policy is not primarily the motives of a statesman,
> but his intellectual
> ability to comprehend the essentials of foreign
> policy, as well as his
> political ability to translate what he has
> comprehended into successful
> political action. It follows that while ethics in
> the abstract judges the
> moral qualities of motives, political theory must
> judge the political
> qualities of intellect, will, and action."
>
>
>
> Comment: This seems obvious and yet much that
> appears in the press
> emphasizes motive. At the end of my note
> considering Morgenthau's
> categories of Political Theory in relation to
> Fukuyama's End of History, I
> consider the normalization of U.S. relations with
> Libya as an example of
> Political Realism - an act I suspect Morgenthau
> would approve of. Not only
> is it good in itself in that it provides a potential
> for drawing a previous
> enemy into friendly relations in a region where
> friends seem few and far
> between, but it provides a diplomatic "next step"
> after Ahmadinejad's Letter
> - namely it conveys better than words the message
> that if you want to be on
> better terms with the U.S. then do what Libya did:
> get rid of your nuclear
> weapons, quit supporting terrorism, and we will
> normalize relations with
> you.
>
>
>
> The few news reports I saw on TV this evening were
> mostly critical of Bush's
> (although I assume the idea was Rice's) motives in
> letting the evil author
> of the Lockerbie bombing off the hook. One report
> showed an angry relative
> of someone who was killed in the Lockerbie explosion
> criticizing the
> normalization of relations with Libya with words
> that were in effect calling
> the decision morally reprehensible. I did a Google
> search and the
> international news reports seemed more favorable. A
> negative home-press is
> a potential problem with acting on Morgenthau's
> principle in regard to
> considering the political action as action more
> important than considering
> the motive that inspired the action - especially if
> the motive is a belief
> in the efficacy of realpolitik.
>
>
>
> Lawrence
>
>
>
>
>
>
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