ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the relationships between the parts and outcomes. It describes realism, utilitarianism, and deontological thinking as tools for exploring cases in American foreign policy. The chapter analyses the politics of granting most favored nation (MFN) status to China in ethical terms. The chief advantage of using realism as a tool for evaluating US foreign policy decisions is that in many cases realism is the framework that actually drove participants' thinking. The problem that ethicists who are not realists have with realism as a moral framework is that, as a moral theory, it is so thin. National interest is, however, perilously close to self-interest. Even with the firm intention not to include future knowledge, it is very hard to think about the past in a way that separates out information that only days, weeks, and hours would bring to those who were making the choices.
