Sara Arrow and Alexi Shaw


The Current: What does it mean for the Carnegie Council to be “the voice for ethics in international policy”?

Joel Rosenthal: This organization is unique in trying to link the concept of ethics to public policy at the international level. We’re traditional in our approach. We start with Socrates and the question of how should one live, the “ought” question”—what is the ideal? The second move would be to think of ethics in terms of what choices and values are at stake, what standards do you use. I would submit my challenge to the realists that it’s not just about power or interests, because if you look at a concept like power, power to what end? Power is a means—it’s an insufficient tool; so is the concept of interests. Interests aren’t self–evident or self–executing, they are what we decide them to be. My point would be that there are ethical components to understanding power and interests.


The Current: Your stated goal is to promote ethical leadership. Is that an indirect way to promote peace?

JR: Yes, the fact is our modality, the way we work, is as an educational institution. At the end of the day that’s what we do. We reflect on these issues, bring together the voices for ethics, and so you’re right, the end of the goal is to promote a more peaceful world.

The Current: What has changed since Carnegie found this organization? Looking forward, what new challenges do we face?

JR: Before the first World War there was great optimism about this project. The world was becoming more interdependent but more civilized. It was a whole social Darwinist, [Herbet] Spencer idea that the world was improving in a certain way. If we could just build these institutions, then the kind of war we saw in the American Civil War or the horrible industrial wars of Europe were going to be a thing of the past—that they just didn’t make any sense. There was a lot of optimism that that was yesterday, that the twentieth century would be much more peaceful. But you know the history of the twentieth century is not good in this way. Carnegie didn’t see that coming, so yes, we see ourselves at the beginning of the twenty–first century with a pretty frightening experience in the twentieth century in terms of war and the use of force. And so that’s an open question—what have we learned from the twentieth century? How do we apply these lessons if any to the twenty–first century?


JR: Yes, I think that’s an important point. A large part of what we do is to create a space where you can have a genuine exchange of views and experience a range of views. We can invite people to participate in this dialogue, and that’s where we leave it. Our feeling is there’s lots of advocacy and ideological commitment out there in the world, and we define ourselves as against that.

The Current: What distinguishes ethics from ideology?


The Current: Any specific examples of how your nonpartisan status affects what your organization can do?


The Current: In a case such as China, or another authoritarian state like Russia, how does the Council avoid adopting a finger–wagging stance, or provoking another tired argument about political versus economic rights?




The ethical problem is one of responsibility and collective action. If this is everyone’s problem, then it’s no one’s. I think the key to solving the problem is to find ways to assign responsibilities, and to distribute the burdens to actors who see an interest in helping to resolve the problem.

In an ideal world it would be helpful if the ICC could play this role. But I am a realist and I have doubts. The sovereign states will need to organize amongst themselves to see it in their interests to act. These interests can be “ethical” interests by the way. Who wants to live in a world where genocide happens?

The Current: How does an ethical framework get translated or actualized in our foreign policy or in international affairs?



JR: I think we’re already seeing it, for sure. I would define realism as being less ideological than what we’ve seen. Some of it was rhetorical and some of substantive, but clearly there was an ideological thread that did run through the Bush administration and I do see Obama distancing himself from that.


Again, it’s very early. Right now the Obama administration is testing what’s possible and some people are concerned that those changes may in fact be quite limited when tested against reality. We’ll see.

The Current: Do you think it’s important for Obama, or any leader, to articulate an overarching vision for his foreign policy? If he were to do so, what might it look like?


I think the Obama administration has the opportunity to articulate a strategy of ethical realism that is interest–based and consistent with a historical tradition of U.S. foreign policy. You can see elements of it in FDR’s style and approach, where many tradeoffs made, some of which were quite painful indeed. Yet FDR always came back to central ethical principles articulated in the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms. The Charter and the Freedoms were deeply ethical and normative but they remained general frameworks and long term goals – not triumphal or too narrow in policy terms.

The Current: Are there intellectual forebears you think Obama is drawing on as his framework for a foreign policy?

JR: Absolutely. On the philosophical side, and I was glad to see this, one of his points of reference for foreign policy was Reinhold Niebuhr, and Niebuhr would have described himself as a realist—an ethical realist. Niebuhr’s view was that there’s evil in the world and evil needs to be confronted but the wrong approach is a self–righteous approach, and we ought to confront evil but in a humble way that recognizes our own limits. This is a difficult point but I think it’s one Obama does get: we’re not pure. The quest for purity is a dangerous business and we should understand the imperfection and impurity of our own actions even when we act for good. The obvious example would be the second World War which was a “good” war which ended in the use of the atomic weapon—let’s not be so triumphal about our goodness; it was a tragedy.


ALEXI SHAW is a senior majoring in Russian literature & culture.

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