American Interests, American Purpose: Moral Reasoning and U.S. Foreign Policy (The Washington Papers) - Softcover

Weigel, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0275933369 ISBN 13: 9780275933364

Publisher: Praeger, 1989

Synopsis

American Interests, Amercan Purpose explores the relationship between moral norms and U.S. foreign policy. The book does not so much attempt to provide a theoretical framework for the ongoing debate of morality and foreign policy as to examine four different controversial aspects of the argument. Weigel begins with a discussion of the cultural Protestant moralism that characterized Woodrow Wilson's approach to world politics. Here, the author suggests that the discussion involves the fundamental question, What is morality or moral reasoning? The book goes on to examine the pressures put on the foreign policy debate by the rise of modern totalitarianism. Weigel examines the modern cleric's arguments against nuclear deterrents. Finally, the book sketches the moral, strategic, and empirical case for U.S. foreign policy in which support for indigenous democratic forces throughout the world has a high priority.

About this title

About the Author:

GEORGE WEIGEL is the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He was a 1984-1985 fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and has served as a consultant to members of Congress, officials of the executive branch, and religious leaders on issues of ethics and U.S. foreign policy.

Review:

"George Weigel has done us all a great service by illuminating the points of tangency between today's foreign policy dilemmas and contemporary moral thinking. The latter too often becomes either irrelevant or simplistic when it touches foreign policy problems. Weigel is, on the contrary, sensible, rigorous, and humane--and is gifted with a graceful prose style to boot. Reinhold Niebuhr and John Courtney Murray have found a worthy intellectual heir."-R. James Woolsey Former Under Secretary of the U.S. Navy Partner in Law, Shea and Gardner

About this edition

• Publisher: Praeger
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0275933369
• ISBN 13: 9780275933364
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 133