Session 7: The Peace Cloak

Morgenthau in Another Great Debate   aims to uncloak the American foreign policy. The policy is put forth under the false pretence of 'humanitarian and pacific traditions.' The real guiding principle behind all foreign policies especially the United states, according to Morgenthau, is the balance of power. Denying that would be like saying that  Hitlers policies were based on the ideals of humanitarianism. 

 This need to justify your actions and aims as moralistic is very problematic because as Morgenthau argues that "what separates the 'utopian' from the 'realist' position cannot be so sharply expressed in terms of alternative foreign policies. The very same policies policies can be and are supported by both schools of thought" This very nature of the foreign policy stems from the interests of the nation states. This article gives an example of Great Britain and it's colonial conquests that it justified by saying that this was for the good of the state they intervened.

Moreover Morgenthau raises a vital point about nationalist history which I found very interesting. He argued that the need to escape to an supposed " political innocence of the past" gives you nothing. Painting or white washing history is a common tendency in all nationalist historiography however, Morgenthau believes that there is no point in cloaking your history or policies because " we know that this is the way all nations are when their interests are at stake"