Morality, War and Foreign Policy

Joseph Nye Jr. Delivers 2020 Brodie Distinguished Lecture

Should morality matter in American foreign policy? The conventional, and cynical, view is that morality doesn't matter — only national interest does — and that U.S. leaders should be realists in dealing with a brutal, amoral world.

Harvard professor Joseph Nye Jr. argued the opposite on March 4, as he delivered the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations' Bernard Brodie Distinguished Lecture on the Conditions of Peace. Nye, one of the world's leading scholars of international relations, has studied the foreign policies of the 14 presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Donald Trump.

Morals matter, Nye said, and they should....