LEADER 00000cam a2200553 i 4500 
001    bnxbx7808gvcvw0f 
008    200512s2020    nyu|||||||||||001 0deng|  
020    9780190935962|qhardback 
020    |z9780190935979 (updf) 
020    |z9780190935986 (epub) 
041    eng 
082 00 327.73009/04|223 
092 0  327|bengelska 
100 1  Nye, Joseph S.,|cJr.|d1937-|4aut 
245 10 Do morals matter? :|bpresidents and foreign policy from 
       FDR to Trump /|cJoseph S. Nye, Jr 
246 1  Presidents and foreign policy from FDR to Trump 
264  1 New York, NY :|bOxford University Press,|c[2020] 
300    xiv, 254 pages|c25 cm 
336    text|btxt|2rdacontent 
337    unmediated|bn|2rdamedia 
338    volume|bnc|2rdacarrier 
504    Includes bibliographical references and index 
520    " Americans constantly make moral statements about 
       presidents and foreign policy. Unfortunately, many of 
       these judgments are poorly thought through. A president is
       either praised for the moral clarity of his statements or 
       judged solely on the results of their actions. Woodrow 
       Wilson showed, however, that good intentions without 
       adequate means can lead to ethically bad consequences. 
       Richard Nixon, on the other hand, is credited with ending 
       the Vietnam War, but he sacrificed 21,000 American lives 
       and countless others for only a brief "decent interval."  
       In Do Morals Matter?, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., one of the 
       world's leading scholars of international relations, 
       provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of the role of
       ethics in US foreign policy during the American era after 
       1945. Nye works through each presidency from Truman to 
       Trump and scores their foreign policy on three ethical 
       dimensions of their intentions, the means they used, and 
       the consequences of their decisions. Alongside this, he 
       also evaluates their leadership qualities, elaborating on 
       which approaches work and which ones do not. Regardless of
       a president's policy preference, Nye shows that each one 
       was not constrained by the structure of the system and 
       actually had choices. He further notes the important 
       ethical consequences of non-actions, such as Truman's 
       willingness to accept stalemate in Korea rather than use 
       nuclear weapons.  Since we so often apply moral reasoning 
       to foreign policy, Nye suggests how to do it better. Most 
       importantly, presidents need to factor in both the 
       political context and the availability of resources when 
       deciding how to implement an ethical  policy--especially 
       in a future international system that presents not only 
       great power competition from China and Russia, but  
       transnational threats as borders become porous to 
       everything from drugs to infectious diseases to terrorism 
       to cyber criminals and climate change.  "--|cProvided by 
       publisher 
520    "At dinner with a group of friends, one asked what I had 
       been doing lately. When I said I was writing a book on 
       presidents, ethics and foreign policy, she quipped "it 
       must be a short book." Another added more seriously, "I 
       didn't think ethics played much of a role." That 
       conventional wisdom marks not only dinner discussions, but
       political analyses as well. An Internet search shows 
       surprisingly few books on how presidents' moral views 
       affected their foreign policies and how that affects our 
       judgments of them. As Michael Walzer (an important 
       exception to the rule) described American graduate 
       training after 1945, "moral argument was against the rules
       of the discipline as it was commonly practiced, although a
       few writers defended interest as the new morality." A 
       survey of the top three American academic journals on 
       international relations over fifteen years found only four
       articles on the subject. As one author noted, "leading 
       scholars...do not dedicate serious attention to 
       investigating the influence of moral values on the conduct
       of nations." It is not a career-enhancing topic for a 
       young scholar, but has long intrigued me as an old 
       practitioner and student of American foreign policy. The 
       reasons for skepticism seem obvious to many. While 
       historians have written about American exceptionalism and 
       moralism, diplomats and theorists like George Kennan long 
       warned about the bad consequences of the American moralist
       -legalist tradition. International relations is the realm 
       of anarchy with no world government to provide order. 
       States must provide for their own defense, and when 
       survival is at stake, the ends justify the means. Where 
       there is no meaningful choice there can be no ethics. As 
       philosophers say, "ought implies can". No-one can fault 
       you for not doing the impossible"--|cProvided by publisher
650  0 Presidents|xProfessional ethics|zUnited States 
650  0 Presidents|zUnited States|xDecision making 
650  7 Presidenter|2sao 
651  0 United States|xForeign relations|y1945-1989|xMoral and 
       ethical aspects 
651  0 United States|xForeign relations|y1989-|xMoral and ethical
       aspects 
651  7 Förenta staterna|2sao