MORALITY, POWER AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
This research paper compares and discusses two schools of
thought, the power reality and morality approaches to the
shaping and explanation of international relations and in
particular the use made of international organizations and
their effectiveness. After outlining these alternative modes of
analysis, three specific cases are studied: (1) the role of the
League of Nations in the Abyssinia crisis in the 1930s; (2) the
part played by the United Nations in defusing the Cyprus crises
in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s; and (3) the United Nations and
American intervention in Somalia in the 1990s. In general, the
power reality approach has tended to produce a more tailored
and stabilizing use of international organizations than have
foreign policies strongly influenced by more idealistic
Realpolitik v. Morality in Foreign Policy
Two leading conceptualizers and implementers of the power
reality school of thought in recent times are the American
historians and diplomats, George Kennan and Henry Kissinger,
whose views differ sharply from those of the principal
architect of the more idealistic approach to international
relations and international organizations, Woodrow Wilson.
Kennan said that "there has been . . . a very significant
gap between challenge and response in the conduct of foreign
policy, . . . this gap . . . today [1951] places us in great
peril."1 Kennan attributed this failure to a lack of
realistic foreign policy planning and to what he called a "legal-
moralistic approach to international problems."2 He said that
the American tendency to project into its view of international
relations its own national values and experience often led to an
American failure to back up its words with action and a foreign
policy which was based on impractical idealism rather than upon
a realis...