Do Morals Matter? Do Morals Matter?

Do Morals Matter‪?‬

Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump

    • 3.0 • 2 Ratings
    • $13.99
    • $13.99

Publisher Description

A concise yet penetrating analysis of how modern American presidents have--and have not--incorporated ethics into their foreign policy.

Americans constantly make moral judgments about presidents and foreign policy. Unfortunately, many of these assessments are poorly thought through. In Do Morals Matter?, Joseph S. Nye, Jr. provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in US foreign policy since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency onward. Nye works through each presidency from FDR to Trump and scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions: their intentions, the means they used, and the consequences of their decisions. 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 fully constrained by the structure of the system and actually had choices. Since we so often apply moral reasoning to foreign policy, Nye suggests how to do it better. Most importantly, he shows that 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 a host of additional transnational threats.

GENRE
Politics & Current Events
RELEASED
2019
December 2
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
256
Pages
PUBLISHER
Oxford University Press
SELLER
The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford trading as Oxford University Press
SIZE
1.3
MB

Customer Reviews

EatSleepHoop21 ,

An admirable topic with a superficial delivery

I was quick to purchase this books for two reasons: 1) Nye’s pedigree, and 2) I was excited to read about the morality of presidential decision-making as it pertains to foreign policy. While I was delighted by his insightful and optimistic take on great power competition in the final chapter, I was underwhelmed by the rigor of his ethical analyses. Perhaps this book is written for a general audience, or perhaps he assumes that his readers are readily familiar with the granular context of each foreign policy decision, but the words on the page are nowhere near sufficient in depth. The furthest he goes are mentions JWT and Weber’s ethics of responsibility and conviction, but the book should honestly be at least double its length in order to establish a rigorous framework for morality in foreign policy decisions.

More Books by Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

Is the American Century Over? Is the American Century Over?
2015
The Future of Power The Future of Power
2011
Soft Power Soft Power
2009
Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era
2013
Korea 2020 Korea 2020
2010
The Paradox of American Power The Paradox of American Power
2003

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