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- EXCLUDING MORALS FROM LEGITIMATE TRUTHS JUSTIFIES WAR
MORALITY IS NECESSARY1. MORAL CERTAINTY IS NECESSARY FOR EFFECTIVE FOREIGN POLICY Michael Duffy, Analyst, CNN, MARCHING ALONE, September 2, 2002. http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/02/time.marching/index.html. Accessed May 23, 2003. p-np. There is a deeper worry within the party too: that after 20 months in office, Bush relies too heavily on moral certainty to make decisions overseas and not enough on the same kind of forceful, black-and-white distinctions when making decisions at home. Bush's experience as a businessman should give him a persuasive voice on economic problems, but thus far it hasn't. Yet overseas, where Bush's experience is more limited and his advisers are divided, he is running greater risks and relying on a moral code that almost everyone believes will be difficult to maintain. The Republican stalwarts who spoke to Time were quick to say they did not want Bush to abandon his preference for the stark choice; they just argued that he should do less of it abroad and more of it at home. Failing to do so, they warned, could endanger his chances at a second term. More than most presidential candidates, Bush promised during his campaign to look heavenward for guidance if elected. In nearly every speech he talked about putting his hand on the Bible and told voters he didn't need polls to know what to do, so help him God. And yet campaign promises are not the only reason--nor the most important reason--that moral certitude plays such a crucial role in Bush's decisions overseas. He came to office largely ignorant of foreign affairs. His team split immediately--and deeply--after his Inauguration into two fiercely divided camps, and is already scarred by the pitched battles between the conservative wing, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, and the pragmatists under Secretary of State Colin Powell. Lacking his father's deep reservoir of experience to draw upon, how does Bush resolve his advisers' titanic disagreements? He goes with his gut. He relies on an instinctive sense of who is good and who is bad overseas--and then he sticks at all costs with the call he has made. His confidence in this process has grown with his success in Afghanistan. He took to heart the lesson that he should trust his moral sense and have faith in what a former Clinton aide, not without admiration, calls "rising dominoes"--the sense that if Bush unfurls a big bright flag and marches toward the mountains, the world will follow.” 2. COMMON MORAL FOUNDATION STRENGTHENS OBLIGATION Rittberger Volker, University of Tübingen, CONSTRUCTIVIST FOREIGN POLICY, Foreign Policy Theory, 1999, p 35. The strength of obligation attached to a norm depends on the extent to which it is shared by the units within a social system. [ 7 ] We can speak of a high degree of commonality if all the actors in a social system, for example the member states of an international organization, share a certain value-based expectation of behavior. If a certain expectation is shared "only" by a majority of actors, then it possesses a medium degree of commonality. Low commonality prevails when only a minority of actors shares a certain expectation of behavior. In the last case, it is impossible to formulate a constructivist prediction for a state’s foreign policy because constructivists hold that a norm can only be ascribed influence on a state’s behavior if it can claim at least a medium degree of commonality (see Legro 1997).
1. LACK OF MORALS IN REALISM JUSTIFIES WAR Timothy Lomperis, Department of Political Science, St. Louis University, FLAWED REALISM: HANS MORGENTHAU AND KENNETH WALTZ ON VIETNAM, 1999, http://www.townhall.com/phillysoc/lomperisflawed%20realism.htm, Accessed June 1, 2003, p-np. Some of Morgenthau’s most basic tenets on Vietnam were consistent with his balance of power theory. Unlike Waltz, he did understand the importance of China and of an Asian balance of power. He insisted that “China is, even in her present underdeveloped state, the predominant power in Asia;” and that, as a great power, is potentially the greatest in the world. 13 With this acknowledgement, he readily conceded that China was a direct threat to the global balance of power as well: “since the expansion of Chinese power and influence, threatening the Asian and world balance of power, proceeds by political rather than military means, it must be contained by political means.” 14 Here Morgenthau’s predisposition towards multipolarity readily accommodated China to his multipolar structure and to China’s integral role in this global balance of power. His insistence in his writings on the unique role of national character, however, permitted him to relegate Chinese expansionism to the political and cultural spheres rather than to the military. As a balance of power theorist in which all great powers are central actors to the system, he also argued that a U.S. policy of isolating China was both undesirable and impractical. Influence is something, he observed, that could not be walled off. 15 This also applied to his concern about the excessively ideological cast to the justification of the Vietnam War. Such universalistic crusades tended to overwhelm more prudent calculations of national interest; and, as a realist, he believed no state should formulate foreign policies on behalf of universal moral principles. In this, he was joined by Kenneth Waltz. 16 Interestingly, Waltz also joined Morgenthau in seeing Vietnam as a potentially fatal seduction to the temptation of excessive power. Waltz saw this as inherent to the inordinate concentration of power in any bipolar system. The saving grace was that both superpowers would be equally prone to this temptation, and their follies of intervention would tend to offset each other. Morgenthau agreed that such hubris emanated from a bipolar system, and this was one of the many reasons why he preached the superior virtues of a multipolar system. Such irrational acts as Vietnam would be less likely with several other great power players and adversaries to worry about. 17 Indeed, although Morgenthau never detailed any concrete regional balances of power as a discrete level-of-analysis, his multipolar global perspective permitted him to come close in that he understood the global balance of power to result from a combination of a “dominant balance of power and local systems.” His lament, however, was that the bipolar system of the Cold War had stripped local balances of all autonomy and made them subservient to “the new world-wide balance of which the United States and the Soviet Union are the main weights.” 18 In this, with respect to Vietnam, he was nearly wrong. Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 5.81 Mb. Share with your friends:
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