MICHAEL WALZER’S MORAL CRITIQUE OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE POST-WAR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Sara M. Kupfer August 2003 This thesis entitled MICHAEL WALZER’S MORAL CRITIQUE OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE CONTEXT OF THE POST-WAR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE BY SARA M. KUPFER has been approved for the Department of History and the College of Arts and Sciences by Kevin Mattson Associate Professor of History Leslie A. Flemming Dean, College of Arts and Sciences KUPFER, SARA M. M.A. August 2003. Department of History. Michael Walzer’s Moral Critique of American Foreign Policy in the Context of the Post- War American Foreign Policy Debate (186 pp.) Director of Thesis: Kevin Mattson This thesis discusses Michael Walzer’s role as a public critic of American foreign policy from the mid-1950s to the present. The purpose of this discussion is two-fold. First, it seeks to trace out a voice on the American liberal left that does not fit the common stereotype of a negativist, ideologically rigid leftist critic. Walzer’s alternative liberal vision as articulated in the course of the past four decades demonstrates the ways in which it is possible for intellectuals on the left to remain true to liberal values and put forward a highly nuanced and constructive critique of official foreign policy without succumbing to negativism or ideological dogmatism. Second, this discussion is based on the premise that Walzer’s ideas can best be understood not just by analyzing them philosophically but also by considering Walzer’s main intellectual influences, his personal background, and the historical context in which he is writing. Although a lot has been written on Walzer’s political thought per se, there has so far been no attempt to place the public writings of this important political philosopher in the context of his times. This thesis proceeds chronologically and is divided into five chapters. Chapters I and II discuss Walzer’s personal background, education, and early political writings for Dissent magazine in the 1950s. Chapters III and IV deal with Walzer’s political activism in the 1960s and discuss how his opposition to the Vietnam War led him to think about the moral aspects of warfare in more systematic terms, culminating in the publication of his most significant philosophical work on foreign policy, Just and Unjust Wars, in 1977. Chapters V and VI look at Walzer’s contributions to the public foreign policy debate during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, and also deal with Walzer’s response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The thesis concludes with an epilogue outlining today’s liberal foreign policy dilemma with regard to America’s recent war in Iraq and thereby considers the continued significance of Walzer’s alternative left-liberal foreign policy vision. Approved: Kevin Mattson Associate Professor of History Acknowledgments To complete this thesis, I was able to rely on the support of a number of individuals and sources of financial support. First of all, I would like to thank my adviser, Professor Kevin Mattson, for having done a superb job as my thesis director. With his enthusiasm for the topic and expertise in twentieth century American leftist thought, he was able to provide exceptional guidance throughout the thesis writing process. Furthermore, I would like to thank the two other members of my thesis committee, Professors Chester Pach and Paul Milazzo, for their useful advice and perceptive criticism. Moreover, I would like to thank Professor Michael Walzer himself for having given so generously of his time and granting me a long interview. Having been able to meet him in person and clarifying some of the issues discussed in this thesis was extremely helpful. The Contemporary History Institute at Ohio University (CHI) provided generous fellowship support, a travel grant, and an intellectually highly stimulating academic environment, thus creating absolutely ideal conditions for completing an M.A. in contemporary history. I was able to count on additional financial support from my parents in Switzerland. I especially would like to thank them for having so wholeheartedly supported my endeavor to venture outside the confines of a historically stable and politically neutral Switzerland and pursue new opportunities on the other side of the Atlantic. Along with the faculty of the OU history department, my fellow history graduate students have provided an extremely supportive environment in the course of my two years of graduate studies at OU. I am deeply grateful for having been able to rely on their warm support and friendship throughout the thesis writing process. Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude to Jeffrey T. Kuhner, for having so forcefully encouraged me to pursue graduate studies in the United States after finishing my B.A. in Canada. I think it was the best decision I could possibly have made. Had it not been for him, I would never even have dared to dream of a place like Ohio University. 7 Table of Contents Abstract................................................................................................................................3 Acknowledgments...............................................................................................................5 Introduction..........................................................................................................................8 I. Walzer 1935 – 1957 and the Post-War Liberal Consensus.......................................16 II Walzer 1957 – 1964: Harvard Graduate School and Political Activism ..................42 III The Vietnam War: Intellectual Dissent and the Antiwar Movement .......................75 IV Grappling with the Vietnam Experience: Walzer’s Academic Work in Just War Theory..................................................................................................109 V Moral Criticism Versus “Moralism:” The Carter Years and the Reagan Era.........134 VI Michael Walzer as a Public Just War Theorist in the Aftermath of the Cold War.......................................................................................................155 Epilogue ...........................................................................................................................169 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................179 8 Introduction Michael Walzer counts as one of the most important political philosophers in America today. Walzer’s theories of justice have been widely discussed and analyzed by philosophers and political scientists alike, and he has become a well-known and oft-cited authority on theories of just war and distributive justice. But Walzer is not only a distinguished academic; he also has a significant career as a public intellectual. For over forty years, he has been serving as editor of the leftist magazine Dissent and is currently a contributing editor for The New Republic. Furthermore, Walzer is known within former New Left circles as a 1960s political activist who worked for causes such as civil rights, nuclear disarmament, opposition to the Vietnam War, and the formation of a left-liberal Democratic coalition in support of the Presidential candidacies of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. For over four decades, Walzer has been a public critic of American foreign policy, mostly in the pages of Dissent. As a critic of America’s cold war policies in the late 1950s and the 1960s, Walzer started to look for a set of universal moral principles – which he eventually found in the Christian just war tradition - that allowed him to make a distinction between justified and unjustified American interventions abroad, and to elaborate on the moral issues involved in America’s controversial policy of nuclear deterrence. In fact, Walzer’s activities as a public critic of American policy and his scholarly research as a political theorist became mutually reinforcing. On one hand, his public involvement in protesting particular government policies abroad gave him the impetus to study the moral issues involved in international politics in a more systematic and scholarly fashion. On the other hand, his academic work, in which he sought to 9 establish the principles of modern just war theory, formed the basis of his subsequent public critique of foreign policy and thus enabled him to criticize American actions abroad in a principled and highly sophisticated manner. At the core of Walzer’s public writings is his attempt to put forward a thoughtful leftist critique of American foreign policy. For Walzer, socialism has always stood for a set of universal human values. As he once wrote, “left politics starts with the defense of three core values: “secular enlightenment, human rights, and democratic government.” Indeed, there is a remarkable consistency in Walzer’s public writings with regard to his general argument on foreign policy. Although he greatly elaborated on his principles of justice in the course of his forty-year long career, he has continued to hold on to the view that the defense of basic human values ought to be at the center of any “decent” leftist critique. His academic work in just war theory thereby helped inform his principled leftist critique without resorting to the negativist