MORALITY AT THE WATER'S EDGE
Garrett, Stephen A.
I I I I MORALITY AT THE WATER'S EDGE STEPHEN A. GARRETT Can Carter successfully promote morality in foreign policy? During the 1976 campaign President Carter emphasized that if elected he...
...Hook discussed this principle in terms of domestic policy as well...
...McNaughton, who was killed with several of his family in a plane crash in 1967, started out as a solid supporter of the Vietnam war...
...This has unfortunately not proven to be the case...
...They instead provide a broad directional element to the country's behavior...
...But statesmen also have another existence, that which derives out of their own personal experience, values, images, perceptions...
...The question presents itself as to why these virtuous masses continually select or at least acquiesce in leaders who so baldly violate their values...
...To begin with we have to avoid the fallacy of dividing human experience into opposing categories, namely, the realm of political action and the realm of values...
...The fertilizer that is required comes as a petroleum by-product...
...level, easy where I am, or lifted by the tide, the same...
...South Vietnam was hardly an example of Jeffersonian democracy but on balance it was, if only by comparison, a less authoritarian society than that which prevailed in the North...
...It stands as a prime obstacle to understanding the actual relationship between moral norms and political action...
...The point is that these young Englishmen made choices in a period of moral crisis even if they have been been different ones at different times...
...As it turned out we were not able to succeed in the former but faced the problems of having achieved the latter...
...If one generalized the principle behind your position, it would be impossible to adopt any kind of social legislation whatsoever...
...2) Assume that Wilson was right...
...The enthusiasm that ushered in the Alliance for Progress, for example, revolved around the proposition that American economic aid to Latin America would help remove the sources of political instability and authoritarianism and make it possible for liberal democracy gradually to gain sway...
...During the 1976 campaign President Carter emphasized that if elected he would restore a greater sense of morality to American foreign policy than had supposedly been featured during the Kissinger era...
...It might be added that the change in MeNaughton had a considerable influence in turning McNamara himself away from the war...
...Euphoria has given way to apathy, only to be succeeded by a new phase in which the failures of the past are ignored or dismissed in the heat of new expectations...
...Perhaps the basic source of this guilt is that power inevitably involves coercion, and coercion is felt to be inherently incompatible with genuine moral conduct...
...Obviously our affairs are not in quite this chaotic a state...
...The introduction of the new strains to these countries did in fact have favorable early results...
...What are the proper ends of policy...
...What is fundamental at least to the Western tradition, however, is that even proper ends do not justify any means...
...An emphasis on the ethical foundations of our diplomacy certainly has much to commend it but it stiLl remains that Americans historicaHy have never established a very satisfactory balance between their moral instincts and their approach to ,political reality...
...Perhaps more serious is that by expecting too much we frequently wind up achieving too little---in the time-honored phrase, the best becomes the enemy of the good...
...A fascinating exchange which cast light on this notion came during a round-table discussion some years ago amongst Sidney Hook, Hans Morgenthan, C.P...
...Those interests--that is to say, those values----concern not only ultimate goals for the society but intervening procedure as well...
...More important, Hitler took the oath as an important piece of evidence that the English had gone soft and could not be counted on to oppose his designs...
...Indeed the German leadership in some cases was far more ambivalent about the approaching war than were the people they led...
...at last toward a really satisfactory blending of our ideals with our diplomacy...
...In any event to insist on the singular virtue of the masses and the singular duplicity of leaders is to produce a logical absurdity: morality consistently giving birth to evil...
...More to the point of this essay is that just because a number of complexities arise when our ideals confront reality, this fact does not absolve us of the duty of attempting to realize those ideals within the limits established 'by reality...
...Goals such as freedom and security for instance are not ones that we can ever totally master...
...The A-Bomb Take the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan...
...Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg's melancholy response to the question of how the war started--"Ah, if only we knew, if only we knew"--revealed doubts that were evidently not shared by the average German...
...In this capacity it might reasonably be assumed that statesmen would-and in some sense should~be governed only by considerations of efficiency, i.e., the dictates of raison d'dtat...
...Was such bombing wrong because the French people in their present situation had no voice in the decision that led to it...
...The problem of course is that programs for curtailing population growth in a country like India are immensely 18 March 1977:174 complicated and fraught with obstacles...
...It follows that the values of the nation are constantly in the process of becoming and that 18 March 1977:170 foreign policy can have no meaning outside of this process...
...To act is to affirm the worth of an end and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make it an ideal...
...As we have said the criteria are ones 18 March 1977:172 of type and degree...
...It is the latter danger that haunts every measure taken for the putative betterment of inankind...
...Were the general hopes for peace and stability in the world hostage to these same events...
...The problem was that Hitlerwas in some sense a "unique" phenomenon, that is, a foreign statesman absolutely beyond appeals to reason and humanity...
...It is relevant over the long run, however, even in authoritarian societies...
...Clearly the United States in the world arena today is confronted with some serious challenges to its fundamental national values, particularly its commitment to liberal democracy and an improving standard of life for the deprived peoples of the developing world...
...The Ambiguity of Moral Choice Actually most debate over "morality" in international affairs is not really about morality as such but about the application of moral values in specific circumstances...
...The subject was the relationship between Western moral values and the threat of both Communism and nuclear warfare...
...Flat to my knuckle, he dries out...
...On the one hand they are charged with the protection of the state, with the maintenance and extension of the interests of the community of which they are the temporary agent...
...This sounds very compelling but the truth is that no final judgment on the moral validity of dropping the bomb can ever be given...
...What we cannot expect is that the statesman will be able to transcend the tragedy that is inherent to all human experience--unlimited ambitions, limited opportunities...
...Perhaps most ominous---and in view of the early hopes expressed for it, most ironic--the Green Revolution has had the effect of encouraging population growth...
...He said that power tends to corCommonweal: 171 rupt...
...In the event the Oxford oath was not only misdirected in its emphasis but had almost exactly the opposite effect of what it was intended to achieve...
...We might note here that still another factual problem in the Vietnam debate was to determine just what the level of civilian suffering in Indochina actually was: supporters of the war tended to produce modest figures, opponents much larger ones...
...I want more than there is: a miraculous commotion, stars over the roof, mirrors, the fine gold hair...
...The available memoirs in fact indicate that this was the prevailing "prediction" of those involved in the decision...
...More recent developments however have been distinctly less encouraging...
...Obviously not...
...appeasement" of one's supposed adversaries, may be both morally and practically the best course...
...Any political choice has to accept that not all of those affected by the decision can be polled before the making of it...
...Perhaps Churchill was thinking of other things that could be done that could be equally effective in curbing German revanchism and thus he could allow himself the luxury of moral outrage...
...What I am saying is that we had here a choice between a morally exhilirating attempt at exorcizing all German sin and a more limited program which dealt with the aberrations of Nazism but stopped short of eliminating Germany as a necessary link in a stable European order...
...At five o'clock, in the first gray light, a wedge of tiny, fanning ripples like a feather wanders on the incoming tide: somebody struggling...
...Professor Hook argued that in some circumstances a limited nuclear exchange might be preferable to world triumph by the Soviet Union...
...One salient instance was the Nazi euthanasia program...
...The evidence is still sketchy but there is at least a presumptive case that the so-called "Green Revolution" may fall in this category...
...A positive answer made civilian suffering perhaps tolerable in Vietnam...
...To say that men are not idealists in the Holmesian sense is to say that human actions are totally random, that they derive out of a moral roulette, that what is done today may well be completely and arbitrarily reversed tomorrow...
...Where he deserves sympathy from his constituents is in their realizing that by the nature of the situation first one then another value may have to be partially sacrificed in order that the net sum of the nation's aspirations may enjoy some reasonably balanced achievement...
...In the end we make a decision on the basis of the overall ethical values we're committed to...
...These are not issues of morality but of political analysis...
...His memoranda to Secretary of Defense McNamara however began to show increasing doubts as 1966 progressed...
...If they were they might be more amenable of solution...
...Once again a positive answer perhaps made tolerable a relatively high Commonweal: 173 number of civilian deaths, a negative response pointed to a much more restrictive conclusion...
...Even in totalitarian societies we sometimes see this factor in operation...
...Democracy for instance is often defined as being no more than an ideology of means, not ends...
...In reality the realms of action and value are permanently intertwined...
...If democratic controls could only be made to prevail throughout the world so the argument went--international peace would be assured...
...The other reason that statesmen generally adhere to some general idea of "morality in means" comes from their role as interpreter of the nation's interests...
...Diplomat and scholar George Kennan once remarked on the fondness of Americans for a "legalistic-moralistic" approach to foreign policy...
...The matter of degree is more complicated...
...India a few short years ago harvested a grain surplus for the first time in memory...
...It is impossible for them totally to separate these two worlds and this means that in practice the cold-blooded, strictly efficient calculation of state interest is often softened by the more generous impulses that characterize their individual life, in particular the impulse that leads most of us to accept at least some constraints on the methods we use to advance our personal goals...
...In most circumstances, popular pressures on governments tO exercise restraint, and even the...
...But who can condemn the moral impulse that led to the Oxford oath, even if we know in retrospect that it may have encouraged Hitler along the path of aggression...
...The question applies particularly in democratic societies where the people supposedly have a direct voice in the determination of the national leadership...
...What seems to be occasional exceptions in human behavior to this standard should not blind us to the fact that it is normally adhered to...
...What is involved here is the necessity of a non-perfectionist ethicDa term that was first developed by the late Arnold Wolfers...
...An understanding of these principles may help to mitigate some of the recent disillusionment and perhaps point the way I I I ] II III STEPHEN A. GARRE'I'r is Chairman 01 the Department o] International Studies at the Monterey Institute o/ Foreign Studies in Cali[ornia...
...A questioner from the audience conceded Hook's fight to choose death before loss of freedom as far as it concerned himself...
...Hook replied with some heat that he found a great deal of moral hypocrisy in the questioner's attitude...
...It is highly tempting for the leadership in such nations to avoid the burden of these efforts if they can see any alternative to it...
...What I would like to suggest here is that we still need to grasp certain basic principles that govern the relationship between morality and foreign policy...
...Commonweal: 175...
...This undoubtedly would have been an effective measure considered in its own terms...
...Was American national security threatened by events in Indochina...
...It should be observed that when this became clearly evident with the outbreak of war the signers of the Oxford oath, as Churchill himself noted with admiration, rechanneled their moral commitment: they served "king and country" against the Nazis at heavy cost to themselves...
...Basically it was a reaction to what was seen as the futile carnage of World War I and it was designed to put pressure on governmental leaders and specifically those in Great Britain to engage in serious disarmament negotiations and to eschew war as a tool of national policy...
...He challenged Hook's right "to make that choice for other people who have never been consulted for example, the Okinawans who live as American chattels and who would be among the first to go in the event of a thermonuclear war...
...Wilson put the blame solely on the machinations of the Kaiser and his immediate associates~ Photographs survive however of the ecstasy with which the German people welcomed the advent of the blood-letting...
...It held out a promise to certain of the developing countries such as India and Pakistan that they would at last be able to surmount the specter of mass famine due to rapid population growth...
...Far more sobering are those situations in which predictions about the effects of a policy were dearly in error...
...What is at issue is the type and degree of coercion...
...What was crucial to the choice made here was the judgment that without the bomb's being dropped the Japanese most likely would fight on, necessitating an invmion of the main Japanese islands...
...The South wasn't all that much freer than the North-and thus there were definite limits as to how much suffering we had a right to create in order to maintain it...
...In moral terms Hiroshima and Nagasaki can be defended on the basis that it hastened the end of the war and thus saved lives, Japanese as well as American...
...Where we go astray is in depicting the situation in simplistic terms: the natural "goodness" of the masses in Rousseau's sense contrasted with the natural deviousness of their leaders...
...The coercion must be shown to be necessary and, even more, el?icient, that is, likely to contribute to the achievement of a morally defensible goal...
...Deciding on the actual figure was obviously crucial to moral judgment, yet once again it was in its own terms not a problem of morality but of objective analysis...
...It is possible after all that that work may in the long run have the beneficial effects that were in fact postulated for it...
...Moreover the need for great quantities of fertilizer has put the developing countries in a very perilous economic situation...
...The Oxford oath was a pacifist declaration...
...Use of the new seeds required a relatively sophisticated technology, particularly in irrigation and in the application of large quantities of fertilizer...
...two red-billed skimmers like swooping fighters in the shadow of a marshy bank...
...As it happened, however, the subsequent collapse of Germany led not to the eradication of European tension but rather to the Cold War, in its original formulation largely an AmericanSoviet struggle over the power vacuum in Central Europe...
...If moral evaltmtions depend heavily on analytical judgments, the latter involve not just a determination of certain objective "facts" but even more the making of "predictions...
...or into waves...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ROBERT WALLACE MORE TBAN TBERE IS Wanting more than there is, I thin myself to the surface of water, transparent, reflecting light, brushing air, keeping at an even distance from the clouds and from the crystal, pink, orange, white pebbles, from the silt, crabs, sliding starfish, a needle-fish snaking its fire-hose snout around a clump of mussels-dear, faintest green, a lens...
...Wilson's analysis of the German decision to go to war in 1914 for example represented a serious misrepresentation of the real situation...
...American casualties in the latter event were estimated at approximately one million...
...What are the acceptable means for achieving these...
...What many spokesmen for the purity of the masses really mean when they criticize the immorality of statesmen is that they happen to disagree with the special moral framework within which most statesmen--the Hitlers excepted --feel they have to operate...
...If we pass a law which fgrbids night work for women, some women will lose jobs which they badly need...
...The huge increase in oil prices now threatens to exhaust the meager foreign reserves of countries such as India as they attempt to purchase fertilizer on the world market...
...It's impossible to guess what course events would have taken if we had merely kept the bomb in reserve or even staged a "demonstration" of it off the coast of Japan as some American scientists suggested...
...When Great Britain and others eventually did react World War II was the result...
...At the Teheran Conference in 1943 between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill, for example, Stalin--perhaps in whimsy--suggested that the most effective way to prevent a-resurgence of German militarism after the war was to shoot 50,000 German officers once the conflict had ended...
...In response the Nazi hierarchy at least temporarily curtailed the program...
...Perhaps more than anything else it is the laying of impossible moral demands on political action that leads to public frustration with politics once these demands inevitably fall short of realization...
...Snow and H. Stuart Hughes...
...Dilemmas do exist between values in individual life and the values of the statesmen given charge over the nation's destiny...
...There is no reason to be overlyeuphoric: the extermination of Jews went on forthwith...
...The sun plunges westm the dry, gray dock, the green creek whirled by a boat's wash into Queen Anne's lace...
...The latter involved the elimination of old people, mental defectives and "socially unproductive" elements of society...
...This notion that power inevitably corrupts, that our basic problem is a vast gulf between the sound instincts of the private citizen and the cynical ethos of the politician, has continued down to the present day...
...Viewed in its totality the separation of human activity into the realm of values and the realm of political action reveals a profound sense of guilt at the notion of power itself...
...Even if the ends of foreign policy are reluctantly acknowledged to be moral principles, it is frequently questioned whether there is a "morality of means" in foreign policy...
...Such frustration can be corrosive enough in itself witness the furies of the McCarthy period or our rejection of the League of Nations...
...When Churchill denounced Stalin's plan at Teheran the "stain on British honor" he alluded to was in part his analysis of how the British people themselves would view such a procedure...
...All politics-and foreign policy as one type of political activity--are governed by two different types of value considerations...
...How and to what degree he implements this pledge will be one of the interesting features to watch in his presidency...
...Hitler may have had the Gestapo to discourage political dissent, but there has never been a society in history that over any appreciable time was regulated simply by the bayonet...
...Take the matter of civilian casualties...
...Even if a certain form of coercion can be shown as efficient to the achievement of a goal, we may stiU question it be, cause it seems to violate canons of proportiOnality, that is, its evil side effects outweigh its utility in gaining an end...
...If we accept that any and all social action necessarily involves some measure of coercion, the obvious implication is that the latter does not in and of itself make an action morally false...
...One of the reasons they do so is that they after all lead double lives...
...The unconditional surrender controversy illustrates a prime aspect of the non-perfectionist ethic, which is that political morality often involves a choice between conflicting yet equally valid moral norms...
...By its nature this tended to favor the larger and wealthier farmers who waxed prosperous at the expense of their far more numerous but less advanced counterparts...
...The statesman, in short, may arrange for the government to behave "more morally" basically because he feels that to do so is part of the charge he has from his constituency...
...Actually the moral framework of foreign policy behavior is ignored in many cases simply because the ultimate ends foreign policy seeks to achieve are so abstract and must always remain partially unfulfilled...
...The assumption emerges that it is only in our pursuits as individuals that ethical norms can be or are expressed...
...Almost everyone would acknowledge in the abstract that civilian deaths should be avoided as much as possible in war...
...We may not have triumphed with the Alliance for Progress but at least the situation is probably no worse than when we began...
...Does this mean that the work leading up to the Green Revolution never should have been attempted...
...The lingering memories of the Vietnam debacle and revelations about the activities of the CIA are only two of the elements contributing to a present widespread cynicism about the actual and potential moral content of American foreign policy...
...He did not actually say that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely...
...A recent example of this fusion of personal and official roles was the case of former Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton...
...On the one hand the action in question may simply not have led to the moral benefits that were postulated for it...
...The masses are peace-loving and generous, yet their best instincts are always being betrayed by their leaders...
...Styled in this way Acton's statement is unexceptional...
...To defeat Nazism a whole range of actions were undertaken by the United States that involved suffering of non-Germans, e.g., the bombing of France prior to D-day...
...To posit an end is by definition to make a moral statement...
...The eternal task facing the statesman is to develop a program in which at least part of each of the nation's catalogue of values is realized...
...What this means is that much of the moral furor that arises over something like the Vietnam war really is a controversy over certain tacts and how they relate to morally appropriate conduct...
...The development of the unconditional surrender formula for Germany during World War II, for example, flowed out of the most honorable of motives: we were determined to crush the spirit of militarism in Germany once and for all...
...The punishment of wrong-doing is one such norm, peace and stability are others...
...The Green Revolution was based on the development of new "miracle" strains of wheat and rice that promised to vastly increase agricultural productivity...
...I I I I MORALITY AT THE WATER'S EDGE STEPHEN A. GARRETT Can Carter successfully promote morality in foreign policy...
...I'm not arguing that we should have struck a deal with Hitler and his associates...
...Wilson' s Influence The tendency of Americans to separate morality and politics into watertight compartments may be traced in part to Woodrow Wilson's influence on our intellectual heritage...
...McNaughton ascribed part of his switch on Vietnam to the constant argument and pressure he was receiving at home from his teen-age children, who criticized him for cohstantly recommending measures in Vietnam that seemed so at variance with his personal standards of behavior...
...The British government was hardly oriented toward a major new European conflict...
...The factual problem is to determine just when a "higher good" is threatened and how many civilian deaths may have to be tolerated in order to protect it...
...Take Lord Acton's famous dictum...
...The difficulty of discerning just what the consequences o[ a given decision actually were is one problem...
...When rumors of it reached the German people there was a strong negative reaction...
...Several of them were included in the Pentagon Papers...
...The lack of such a balance has led to alternating errors of expecting too much or demanding too little from political action...
...a negative response rendered this very same suffering morally absurd...
...Depressing as our failure in Latin America may be, however, it is distinetly less unsettling than a second fate that can sometimes befall moral predictions...
...Random or arbitrary coercion may legitimately be questioned on moral grounds...
...Churchill however rejected it with some heat, declaring that if carried out it would constitute a "stain" on the honor of the British people...
...Power can be a heady elixir and it may indeed corrupt...
...Confident that they now had the means to feed their own people several of the developing countries flagged in their commitment to programs of birth control...
...As Justice Holmes once remarked, "Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act...
...This is not to deny that the question of coercion can raise some sticky moral dilemmas...
...Gold-leaf, and then moon-foil...
...Every law limits the freedom of some individual...
...What we legitimately may demand of the statesman is that his actions reflect the best possible moral combination...
...What it points to is a rather elementary yet constantly ignored principle, which is that our reach must forever remain greater than our grasp...
...Viewed in this way the moral aspect of political choice becomes at bottom a probabilistic enterprise, especially because the complexity of political reality is such that nobody can feel total confidence that a given action will have the favorable moral results postulated for it, i.e., nobody can be sure that his "prediction" will actually prove out...
...The point however is that most statesmen do occasionally stop short of measures that appear to be effectivewand perhaps the only effective--means to an end...
...Sometimes an action taken in a spirit of idealism may not only not improve the situation, it may have a counterproductive effect...
...As a result they are faced with a population explosion that over the next decade may overwhelm even the most optimistic projections of new agricultural output...
...flutters to a piling to await the sun...
...The irony is increased here by the fact that within five years after German surrender we were embarked on a program of rearming Germany in order to face the new challenge...
...Whether they would actual!y have made the final decision for peace without the horrific effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki must always remain the great moral imponderable...
...I cup him up, a half-inch moth, white, gray, and tan like marbling on an old book, with delicate crimson antennae...
...Moral repugnance at the Vietnam war seems to have rested on this point more than any other...
...In the early nineteen-thirties a number of young people in Great Britain signed the so-called "Oxford oath...
...A modest investment which attempted to maintain the relatively more open system in the South--and perhaps even to nudge it farther in the direction of freedom--and may have been justified...
...Another problem o[ analysis intruded: was the peculiar American military strategy in Vietnam, with its accompanying devastation of Vietnamese civilian life, really the only way that Vietnam could have been defended...
...That is, what will be the consequences in moral terms of alternative courses of action...
...almost everyone would also acknowledge that there are hypothetical situations in which a limited number of civilian casualties in warfare may have to be tolerated in the interest of a higher good...
...The reality is that Hitler could count on at least a substantial minority for active support and an equally large number who gave him a passive mandate...
...There is little doubt that we are currently in one of our periodic downphases...
...Theunhappy truth is that underlying social and psychological factors have .been the fundamental ingredients in virtually all of the wars that history has witnessed...
...In his capacity as corporate agent it behooves the leader to protect both these procedural and end values, even if he personally may have very different notiom or no notions at all about proper constraints on national behavior...
...Elementary to Wilson's approach to international relations was a beguiling even if false distinction between the supposedly peaceful instincts of the "masses" and the aggressive designs of various ruling elites...
...What was not justified was the massive and indiscriminate military campaign that the United States inflicted on Vietnam...
...To the extent that there is a tendency today for Americans to abdicate their moral vision, particularly in the sphere of foreign policy, I would suggest that it derives precisely from a n unwillingness or inability to admit that the achievement of moral values through political action does have to take into consideration the non-perfectionist ethic and the difficulties of knowing whether in each case our actions really will have the desired moral effect...
...A distinction of this sort faces two main objections: 1) The "masses" as such are hardly the repository of unalloyed moral virtue...
...It now appears that the Green Revolution may have led to serious if unforeseen political, economic and demographic disruption...
...But the point is that even in a tight police state public notions of appropriate behavior can at times have an important effect on the actions of political leaders...
...those adhering to it pledged that under no circumstances would ,they "fight for king or country...
...The Green Revolution may have seemed to be just such an alternative but its principal author, Nobel Prize-winner Norman Borlaug, may increasingly be viewed--perhaps irrationally and unfairlymas having been the proverbial Greek bearing gifts...
...As a result class antagonisms in the countryside have increased perceptibly...
...Particularly during our occasional periods of disillusionment we have a tendency to view foreign policy as a sort of moral desert...
...Considerable evidence exists to show that the Japanese government was seriously contemplating surrender even before the use of the atomic bomb...
...The general point here is that tensions among nations are not simply functions of conspiracies at the top...
...Not to make choices on the protection and extension of these values will in itself be a choice--for abdicating them...
Vol. 104 • March 1977 • No. 6
