American Approaches to Moral Choice

Abstract

Americans, for a substantial part of their history, have tried to come to terms with the moral problem by espousing one of two approaches. The first approach seeks to deal with the realities of world affairs with steady realism and tough-mindedness. It has its roots in historical experiences still fresh in the minds of many who were caught unprepared by the events of the period between World War I and II and who carry a sense of guilt for this failure. They alone for this guilt with strident affirmations about the facts of power. For the most part, power is seen as a comparatively simple phenomenon of which the military is overwhelmingly the most important part. Both of the recent American Secretaries of State have viewed power, not as the endlessly complicated relationship of two living organisms with goals and objectives both comparable and fundamentally unique, but as men might approach a problem in physics to be weighed on the simple scales of relative military preparedness and forces potentially in being.