Carr as Thucydides’ ghostwriter: the paradox of realism and a moral foreign policy

The subject of this paper is to examine the role of morality in foreign policy decision making and action, while its goal is to argue that (1) morality plays an important role in the creation of foreign policy, and (2) that it is not possible to formulate a credible and intelligible foreign policy decision without moral considerations. In order to argue this point the author relies on the theoretical framework set by Edward Hallet Carr in his groundbreaking book The Twenty Years Crisis (1946), and reinforce his conclusions with an examination of one of the pivotal passages of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, the famous Funeral Oration delivered by the Athenian statesman Pericles. In conclusion, the author claims that even in international relations are completely amoral, as they are in the realist account, that foreign policy cannot be, due to the inability of formulating foreign policy without moral considerations.