Choate graduate Malcolm Byrne ’73 addresses fourth and fifth formers. PHOTO/Matt Cheng ‘10

Malcolm Byrne ’73, Director of Research at George Washington University’s National Security Archive, added a new perspective to the usual Reflections agenda when he discussed morality in foreign policy. At a Reflections program for 4th and 5th formers, on Wednesday, April 9th, Mr. Byrne asked students to consider ethics in a context larger than the Choate community.

Mr. Byrne’s work involves persuading the U.S. government to release historical documents. He believes citizens have the right to know the government’s actions so they can develop informed opinions.

The United States generally prides itself on promoting human rights; however, Mr. Byrne presented examples that contradicted this pattern. Early in his talk, he introduced a 1950s government diagram that taught two soldiers how to massacre an entire conference of government officials, a document that shocked the audience. Later, Mr. Byrne discussed a documented message from the U.S. to Guatemala, advising that Guatemala end rebellions swiftly, despite the inevitable increase in civilian casualties.

Aditya Rajagopalan ’09 thought that Byrne’s use of documents “sent a point across much more effectively than merely saying, ‘Our government has been immoral, and we have an obligation to check that.’”

History teacher Richard Stewart hopes that students will now consider a prevalent topic in today’s U.S. foreign policy, the “idea of standards even in wartime. A country loses credibility [when it is] not upholding values it holds other states to.”

Mr. Byrne also emphasized the importance of understanding the opposing side. He suggested that Russian Cold War documents show the motives for Russian aggression as within the scope of public sentiment in the United States: his opinion was that Soviets, too, acted in this national self-interest, which shows how countries often act questionably under extreme pressure.

Mr. Byrne’s group has organized conferences between former rivals, such as one with the principal decision makers of Russia, the U.S., and Cuba in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The conference helped produce a more complete view of history because the policy makers were able to question and understand each other’s motives. Byrne challenged students to form their own opinions on the past by directly referring to primary sources at the National Security Archive’s website, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/index.html.

Mr. Byrne also emphasized the importance of historical knowledge in making an informed decision. For example, he claimed that, had the United States considered the preceding millennia of Vietnamese struggles for independence, they might have reconsidered its long term presence in Vietnam.

In addition to speaking at the Reflections program, Mr. Byrne attended a dinner with students on April 8th and led discussions in HPRSS classes on the same day. In class, Mr. Byrne further demonstrated the importance of background information, connecting causes of current events to centuries-old world history. For example, he traced Russia’s aggression on Turkish straits back to Peter the Great’s eighteenth-century desire for a warm-water port in Russia. He also defined the beginning of European demands for and conflict over Middle Eastern oil as the day Winston Churchill replaced coal with oil as the fuel source of the British navy.

While Mr. Byrne was extremely knowledgeable and able to answer specialized questions in history classes, Rajagopalan enjoyed his new insights at Reflections most. “I think the setting of Reflections allowed him to work in the environment in which he’s strongest—questioning government.”

Mr. Stewart hopes that Mr. Byrne will inspire students to follow current issues and to gather a “reinforced sense that there’s a place for ethics in public life and even in foreign policy.”

For Julie Bauer ’10, “[The Reflections program] changed my thoughts about the morals of high ranking people.”