5 - To Provide and to Protect

Summary

Recent advances in moral and social psychology have made clear that political ideology has moorings in the same moral foundations thought to have evolutionary roots. A number of different scholars have converged on what Duckitt has labeled a “dual-process model” of political ideology, a two-dimensional framework for explaining the fundamental cleavages in politics. The first dimension captures binding morality, driven by a motivation to protect from threats. The second dimension captures a motivation to provide for others’ welfare, which defines virtue as taking care of others. Since there is no autonomous political sphere, however, we project these same cleavages onto foreign policy. I present evidence from two American and one Russian surveys showing that the two-dimensional models of foreign policy belief systems found to structure foreign policy attitudes in the United States and other countries have moral roots. Militant internationalism, our beliefs about the necessity of carrying a big stick and being willing to use it, are strongly associated with binding moral values, our motivation to protect. Cooperative internationalism, our beliefs about the gains to be had from cooperation and our obligations to others outside our own borders, is strongly associated with the moral motivation to provide.