Morality and American Foreign Policy: The Role of Ethics in International Affairs

Most international relations specialists since World War II have assumed that morality plays only the most peripheral role in the making of substantive foreign policy decisions. To show that moral norms can, and do, significantly affect international affairs, Robert McElroy investigates four cases of American foreign policy-making: U.S. food aid to the Soviet Union during the Russian famine of 1921, Nixon's decision to alter U.S. policies on biochemical weapons production in 1969, the signi...