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 Council was founded by Andrew Carnegie in order to promote the basic principle of peace as one of his original peace endowments. There are three principles we take most seriously in terms of how we take
