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judgments. When it accepts the responsibilities bf governing, implicit in that acceptance is the assumption
that it is right that the state should be sovereign, that the integrity Of its political life should be assured, that
50
its people should enjoy the blessings of military security, material prosperity and a reasonable opportunity
for, as the Declaration of Independence put it, the pursuit of happiness. For these assumptions the
government needs no moral justification, nor need it accept any moral reproach for acting on the basis of
them.
55
5 This assertion assumes, however, that the concept of national security taken as the basis for
governmental concern is one reasonably, not extravagantly, conceived. In an age of nuclear striking
60
power,national security can never be more than relative; and to the extent that it can be assured at all, it
must find its sanction in the intentions of rival powers as well as in their capabilities. A concept of national
security that ignores this reality and, above all, one that fails to concede the same legitimacy to the security
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needs of others that it claims for its own, lays itself open to the same moral reproach from which, in normal
circumstances, it would be immune.
6
Whoever looks thoughtfully at the present situation of the United States in particular will have to
agree that to assure these blessings to the American people is a task of such dimensions that the
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government attempting to meet it successfully will have very little, if any, energy and attention left to
devote to other undertakings, including those suggested by the moral impulses of these or those of its
citizens.
7
Finally, let us note that there are no internationally accepted standards of morality to which the U.S.
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government could appeal if it wished to act in the name of moral principles. It is true that there are certain
words and phrases sufficiently highsounding the world over so that most governments, when asked to
declare themselves for or against, will cheerfully subscribe to them, considering that such is their vaguenes
80
that the mere act of subscribing to them carries with it no danger of having one's freedom of action
significantly impaired. To this category of pronouncements belong such documents as the Kellogg-Briand
Pact, the Atlantic Charter, the Yalta Declaration on Liberated Europe, and the prologues of innumerable
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other international agreements.
8
Ever since Secretary of State John Hay staged a political coup in 1899 by summoning the supposedly
wicked European powers to sign up to the lofty principles of his Open Door notes (principles which neither
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they nor we had any awkward intention of observing), American statesmen have had a fondness for hurting
just such semantic challenges at their foreign counterparts, thereby placing themselves in a graceful posture
before domestic American opinion and reaping whatever political fruits are to be derived from the
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somewhat grudging and embarrassed responses these challenges evoke.
9
To say these things, I know, is to invite the question: how about the Helsinki accords of 1975? These,
of course, were numerous and varied. There is no disposition here to question the value of many of them as
100 refinements of the norms of international intercourse. But there were some, particularly those related to
human rights, which it is hard to relegate to any category other than that of the high-minded but innocuous
professions just referred to. These accords were declaratory in nature, not contractual. The very general
105 terms in which they were drawn up, involving the use of words and phrases that had different meanings for
different people, deprived them of the character of specific obligations to which signatory governments
could usefully be held. The Western statesmen who pressed for Soviet adherence to these pronouncements
110 must have been aware that some of them could not be implemented on the Soviet side, within the meanings
we would normally attach to their workings, without fundamental changes in the Soviet system of power
115 changes we had no reason to expect would, or could, be introduced by the men then in power. Whether it
is morally commendable to induce others to sign up to declarations, however high-minded in resonance,
which one knows will not and cannot be implemented, is a reasonable question. The Western negotiators,
in any case, had no reason to plead naivete as their excuse for doing so.
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10 When we talk about the application of moral standards to foreign policy, therefore, we are not talking
about compliance with some clear and generally accepted international code of behavior. If the policies
125 and actions of the U.S. government are to be made to conform to moral standards, these standards are
going to have to be America's own, founded on traditional American principles of justice and propriety.
When others fail to conform to those principles, and when their failure to conform has an adverse effect on
130 American interests, as distinct from political tastes, we have every right to complain and, if necessary, to
take retaliatory action. What we cannot do is to assume that our moral standards are theirs as well, and to
appeal to those standards as the source of our grievances.