Statesmanship and Moral Choice

Abstract

Throughout the ages moralists have expressed horror at the way princes and sovereign states behave toward each other. Behavior which would be considered immoral by any standard can obviously be detected in all realms of life; but nowhere does the contradiction between professed ethical principles and actual behavior appear so patent and universal as in the conduct of foreign relations. Governments spy on each other and lie to each other; they violate pledges and conduct wars, often at the cost of millions of lives and untold misery. No wonder, then, that in western democracies if not elsewhere indignation over such practices should be voiced with vehemence. In our day it frequently expresses itself in wholesale denunciations of the multi-state system on the ground that sovereign states cannot deal with each other except by the use of immoral means, derogatorily called power politics. Some draw the cynical conclusion that morality has no place in international politics, while others would have men fulfill their moral duty by substituting world government for the present immoral political system.