Kenneth W. Thompson (August 29, 1921 – February 2, 2013) was an American academic and author known for his contributions to normative theory in international relations.
Thompson's Principles and Problems of International Politics, a volume of readings co-edited with his mentor, Hans Morgenthau,[1] provided the intellectual guidelines for his thinking through the succeeding four decades.
Thompson has seen himself as part of the influential tradition of political realism, the heir of the thought of Morgenthau and Reinhold Niebuhr, and the sustainer of the subsequent generation of scholars.
Unlike many students of normative theory in international relations, he has been reluctant to judge one side in a dispute entirely right and the other irrevocably wrong, granting instead that both may have some claim of justice which they might press too far if unopposed.
This belief has led in turn to Thompson's consistent position that ethically tolerable outcomes in international politics are more likely to be achieved through a counterbalancing of power than through moral exhortation.