Session 7- "I Told You So!"

Being a realist, Morgenthau in his essay called ‘Another “Great Debate: The National Interest of The United States’ attempts to blast the humanitarian and pacifist inclinations that many claim the American foreign policy has. To him it is nothing more than about balance of power and everything else is just smoke and mirrors. To a wide degree I agree with him.

He iterates that United States foreign policy is justified to the public by the façade created by its statesmen and the government. Justification is done by appealing to the sense of humanity. Now that in my opinion is a very grey area; how far do you go to achieve your ends, what means do you employ and are the ends even worthy and what they seem to be? I agree with Morgenthau that what statesmen say and what they mean are two different things and thus their declarations should not be taken at face value but rather looked at critically. Statesmen often evoke a sense of duty towards the nation, towards the world as the superior and liberating force in the world to intervene in the affairs of world. It is almost like a new version of the White Man’s burden of the colonial times, now it is America's great burden. To Morgenthau’s and my personal dismay it has worked in the past and even works to this day. Morgenthau must have been rolling in his grave when the American public and the world bought Bush’s justification of the Iraq war. It was not to rid that country of tyrants and liberate the people; it was all about the American interests in the region like the realists argue. The disaster it turned out to be, I can almost picture him saying, ‘I told you so’.