Let Them Eat Their Moral Cake

The world's leaders want to have their "moral cake" and eat it too. When it suits their purposes, the heads of states transform the nation-state into a responsible moral entity analogous to the individual citizen who is both accountable and avenging. A few months ago, President Clinton's speech and demeanor dealing with the Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo was a classic instance of the "Popeye the Sailor" approach to relationship between morality and the obligations of a sovereign nation-state. America perceived evil being waged against a helpless minority, we protested, we negotiated and finally-"we stoods what we could stand and we could stands no more." I believe that our intentions were generally pure, but a major effort in both time and money was required to right this wrong. However, was the moral paradigm presented in this case the exception or the norm of nation-state behavior in the international arena? [ Social Philosophy and Policy Center --http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/sppc/index.h... ]

Generally, nation-states assume a corporate identity in a super-national environment that they claim exempts them from most of the moral standards applied to individuals. "A nation must pursue its national self-interests above all other competing claims."[ PS141K - Ethics and International Relations-- http://www.stanford.edu/class/ps142k/ps1... ] A truly moral leader generally is ridiculed as being naive and weak. During the 1970's President Jimmy Carter's efforts to impose the standards of individual morality on America's conduct of its foreign policy allowed his critics to employ cynicism as a powerful political weapon. Even the Nuremberg trials avoided assigning corporate guilt to the German nation when they rejected Henry Morgenthau's plan to convert Germany to an agricultural nation incapable of waging modern warfare. [Demonizing the Germans: New Mythology of Collective Guilt-- http://www.wilpaterson.edu/~newpol/issue... ]

The practitioners of "Real-Politik" are often scoundrels who employ immoral and amoral approaches to the conduct of nation's business. Their political astuteness frequently is measured by an inverse comparison of their use of moral means versus the state's measurable gains. Their Machiavellian ethos permits the employment of the tenets of individual morality to achieve the desired geopolitical end. President Bush's declaration that "Desert Storm" was a "just war" provides evidence of this approach. [ Just War Theory-- http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/j/justwa... ] Did we truly exhaust all legitimate avenues for negotiations? I wish that President Bush had allowed ambassador Glasby to testify about her pre-war meeting with Sadam Hussein. Was the war fought for a noble purpose? At first, the El Sabah family (Kuwaiti ruling family) was deemed to be the moral equivalent of America's founding fathers. The only connection I can see is that both groups were slave holding males. Oil price stability sounds a great deal more like political economy than morality. Finally was the Principle of Proportionality observed? This precept demands that the evil employed to right the moral outrage must not exceed the evil created by the moral outrage. Certainly Sadam was and remains an evil character, yet there is something terribly disturbing about the creation of Iraqi atrocities by an American public relations firm.

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