February 10, 2003
Ethicists Debate Morality and Foreign Policy
by Patrick Rogers
Religion News Service
WASHINGTON -- As President Bush was making his case for war in Iraq in the moral terms of good and evil, a panel of religious and political scholars gathered in Washington to consider the role religious and moral traditions play in shaping U.S. foreign policy, international relations and wartime politics.
While the panel differed on many issues, they agreed the world's major religions are playing an increasingly important part in many of the conflicts flaring up around the globe:
-- Bush, an evangelical Christian, who during his presidential campaign ranked Jesus as his favorite philosopher, is preparing for war with Islamic Iraq -- and the United States is already at war with Islamic extremists in Afghanistan.
Most Americans reject the notion that Bush is leading the United States on a religious crusade, but many Muslims and even some Europeans see the president as "a God-driven cowboy," according to panelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer.
-- Islamic extremist violence, particularly the Sept. 11 attacks, were at least in part motivated by opposition to U.S. support of the Jewish state of Israel.
-- Pakistani Muslims and Indian Hindus are involved in a standoff in Kashmir that could spark a nuclear war between the two countries.
-- "To ignore the role of religion, not just as a personal reality in people's lives, but the role of religion as a public force is to end up with bad security briefings and bad analysis," said the Rev. Bryan Hehir, president of Catholic Charities and professor of ethics and international affairs at Georgetown University.
This emphasis on the religious component of international relations is relatively new.
"Even as late as the 1980s, if you went to major texts of international relations you simply would not find any attention to religion in world politics," Hehir said.
The panel, convened at the Brookings Institution by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, engaged in a wide-ranging discussion that included thoughts on how religious beliefs shape policy, the rise of religiously based terrorism and the "just war" standard.
While the idea of a "just war" is attributed to Catholic moral philosopher Thomas Aquinas, its roots are as old as warfare itself and early records of collective fighting indicate that warriors in many cases employed moral treatment of women and children.
"There are no significant differences among the different moral traditions in regard to the wrongness of massacre and ethnic cleansing. The differences exist about who should intervene and how and under whose authority, and with what degree of force," said Princeton University professor Michael Walzer, author of "Just and Unjust Wars."
When it comes to U.S. intervention in Iraq, Walzer said Saddam Hussein's tyranny and murder cannot be ignored, but, "Right now there are alternatives (to war). Whenever there are alternatives to war and time to try them out, we are morally bound to do that, that is the best moral and political argument against going to war."
Walzer and other panelists argued for a strong U.N. internationalist approach, backed by moral authority and the threat of force.
"There have to be many nations ready to take responsibility for the success of the system, not just one," Walzer said.
Krauthammer, however, rejected that idea.
"We have no choice but to act unilaterally and (on) our own definitions of what is right and just," he said.
But those ideas of what is right and just, so often drawn in black and white, are sometimes smudged and made gray by the real world.
"What is the moral action?" asked foreign policy expert and Brookings Institution Fellow James Lindsay.
There is a natural tension between morals and politics – competing interests often require compromise.
"Part of the problem is that it (morality) is tied up in the pragmatic calculations of how the world works," Lindsay said. Still, he said, Americans, regardless of their religious background, see foreign policy in moral terms.
But that often leads to a claim to the moral high ground that can shut off debate, according to Walzer. "There is an American propensity to think in terms of crusading in the foreign policy debate. I am not sympathetic to faith-based foreign policy."
But is President Bush's foreign policy shaped by his Christian faith?
"He is obviously and sincerely and profoundly moved by religion," Hehir said. "I don't know how that translates out into policy. My sense is that it is more motivational than analytical."
