Joseph Nye, leading scholar of international relations considers presidents and their foreign policy from FDR to Trump, who come up short in the morality polls. In _Do Morals Matter?_, Nye provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in U.S. foreign policy during the post-1945 era. Working through each presidency from Truman to Trump, Nye scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions: their intentions, the means they used, and the consequences of their decisions. Alongside this, he evaluates their leadership qualities, elaborating on which approaches work and which ones do not.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government. Nye has held numerous government positions serving as Assistant Secretary of Defense and Chair of the National Intelligence Council, as well as Deputy Under Secretary of State, and won distinguished service awards from all three agencies. He is a world-renowned authority on American power in the modern era whose work has influenced generations of scholars and policy-makers.