Accounts of litigations and debates over conscientious objection frequently mentioned the precedent of the Nuremberg and other war crimes trials. It is argued that if men may be tried and executed for participation in aggressive wars and illegal wartime acts there must be a moral right and duty to refuse such participation. Indeed, there should be a right to avoid possible trial as a war criminal, I will attempt to assess the validity of this argument generally and its relevance to the Freedom House characterization as a “fantasy” of individual interpretation of the prerogative of conscientious objection.

I favor U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Nevertheless I bring to my subject the attitude of a native-born Washingtonian who remembers that the last time the Senators won the pennant was in 1933, and who is inclined to believe that if you're not wining, there's something wrong. There's something wrong with your theory, there's something wrong with your practice, something wrong someplaee if year after year you end up in tenth, ninth or eighth place. There's little comparable in terms of winning or losing wars of national liberation; obviously one of the things that is most upsetting is that they are not apparently amenable to “winning or losing.” Winning has to be redefined and that redefinition is part of my present task.

Two paragraphs of Schema XIII, on the Church and the Modern World, have been briefly debated by the Vatican Council and will be considered when it reconvenes. They bring to mind the following parable: Once there was a parent whose son was a chronic juvenile delinquent. Early on the boy displayed spectacular anti-social tendencies and everyone urged that the professional advice of psychiatrists be solicited and followed. But for nineteen years the parent avoided a showdown, only occasionally facing the real problem. Rather, his concern took the form of deploring and attempting to deal only with the manifestations of bis son's underlying mental illness. Finally, in despair, the father took the son to the first psychiatrist who was available for a half-hour interview.

The starting point for any serious attempt to relate ethics to foreign policy is the examination of the phenomena of international politics. Once a few very general principles and concepts have been set out by the theologian or ethicist it becomes necessary to turn to the subject matter to which international ethics addresses itself, international politics, in order to make normative goals concrete and meaningful and in order to identify at least the more prominent obstacles to the infusion of ethical values into the conduct of international relations.

The problem of force in international society comes to life most dramatically in connection with planning for national security. International law and organization have attempted to diminish and control recourse to force by individual states on behalf of their pretended national interests. But these efforts have been, on the whole, rather unsuccessful except when they rested solidly on mutual advantage and fear of retaliation.

International law and organization have been especially unsuccessful in replacing national systems of security with an effective international security system in an age characterized by nuclear weapons and the comparatively permanent threat of Communist aggression. The resultant “fearful choice” may be expressed in the language of international ethics in the following way: The basic national interests of the states of the free world must be defended against Communism which would destroy those interests.