Session 7 - Intention is different from results

Morgenthau along with many of my friends and classmates seem ready to believe that statesmen during their justification of war are always trying to deceive the people with their justification.

I believe that it is a case of the timing of examining the policy and by whom. I shall elaborate by looking at an example from one of my peers, who talked about when America attacked Iraq. When  America was attacked Iraq, they said that it was because they wanted to attack the  tyrannical people who live there. On one hand this may be a lie, but on the other hand it may just be the truth, the actual reason for the war. The justification might not just a deception at all. It could have very well been the case that America waged war against Iraq as a pre-emptive strike against a country that housed people that could attack US in the future.

I believe that it all comes down to who examines the policy, what he want to believe and when they examine the policy.

If the policy is examined by someone who already is very critical of the foreign policy of that country and the statesmen, he shall never agree with that policy and will always make up some theory or the other as to the statesmen lying and hiding the real intentions of the war. There are always conspiracy theories.

If the person examines the policy within a few years of implementation, they will be looking at the intention of the country when they took that action. Thing is as time changes so does the ground reality. The intention of the attack might have been something good and humanitarian, but the ground reality ended up being different due to several other reasons. It might just be that what happened after the initial attack was some wrong action due to some wrong planning or belief. This does not in any way mean that the intention of the attack was wrong. If the policy is examined after a long time, then the effects of that policy take the consideration and the policy is criticized based on its effects rather than the intention even though the intention and the actual effects are two very different things.

Morgenthau says:

                "......It is quite a different matter to interpret the American tradition of foreign policy in the light of a collection of official statements which, like most such statements, present humanitarian and pacifist justifications for the policies pursued. If anybody should be bold enough to write a history of world politics with so uncritical a method he would easily and well-nigh inevitably be driven to the conclusion that from Timur to Hitler and Stalin the foreign policies of all nations were inspired by the ideals of humanitarianism and pacifism...."

Yes exactly. This is because whether the foreign policy had positive or negative effects is completely different from why the policy was implemented in the first place. Morgenthau is analyzing the effect of different policies and criticizing them without even looking at why they were implemented in the first place.