Joseph Nye, a leading scholar of international relations, considers presidents and their foreign policy from FDR to Trump who come up short in the morality polls. “Foreign Policy” magazine named Nye one of the top 100 Global Thinkers.

In Do Morals Matter?, Joseph 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.