CIAO DATE: 11/2010
Volume: 24, Issue: 3
Fall 2010
Just War, Jihad, and the Study of Comparative Ethics [Full Text]
John Kelsay
What can the study of the comparative ethics tell us about the similarities and divergences between the just war and jihad traditions? How can the discipline help locate shared concerns, identify persistent differences, and reveal common narratives?
The Ethical Implications of Sea-Level Rise Due to Climate Change [Abstract] (PDF)
Sujatha Byravan, Sudhir Chella Rajan
Does humanity have a moral obligation toward the estimated millions of individuals who will be displaced from their homes over the course of this century primarily due to sea-level rise as the earth's climate warms? If there are indeed sound reasons for the world to act on their behalf, what form should these actions take? This paper discusses the disproportionate accumulation, delayed effects, and asymmetrical impacts arising from the release of greenhouse gases, and advances ethical arguments concerning why and how the global community of nations can address the injustices caused by historic and continuing actions on these climate migrants and climate exiles.
Toni Erskine
It is both possible and important to talk about institutions, in the sense of formal organizations, as moral agents in world politics. As moral agents, institutions can be assigned duties. They can also be blamed for failing to discharge them. But how can we respond to this type of failure? Punishment is a prominent and problematic response to institutional delinquency. This article explores three potential problems with any attempt to punish an institution at the corporate level, each of which focuses on what such an attempt risks doing to the institution's individual human constituents. I label these potential problems ''guilt by association,'' ''misdirected harm'' and ''overspill.'' I illustrate each by turning to the danger of harming ''innocent'' individuals while ostensibly punishing ''delinquent'' states through organized violence, drawing on examples of discrepancies between the justifications for punitive action and the ultimate objects of harm in the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In conclusion, I argue that particular forms of punishment cannot represent morally coherent responses to culpability that is located at the corporate level of an institution. Punitive war waged against the ''delinquent'' state, when responsibility for harm and wrongdoing is not distributive amongst its individual members, provides an extreme and consequential case of such incoherence.
Reviving Nuclear Ethics: A Renewed Research Agenda for the Twenty-First Century [Abstract] (PDF)
Thomas E. Doyle
Since the end of the Cold War, international ethicists have focused largely on issues outside the traditional scope of security studies, such as human rights, humanitarian intervention, refugees, and economic globalization. Consequently, the "nuclear ethics" literature that emerged during the Cold War has not developed further while the strategic and policy literatures on post-Cold War nuclear proliferation have proceeded apace. The nuclear ethics literature thus needs to be revived and reoriented to systematically address the new and evolving 21st century nuclear threats and policy responses. In this paper, I propose a nuclear ethics research agenda for the opening decades of the twenty-first century. I begin by situating this agenda against the main themes of the Cold War nuclear ethical literature. I then propose an initial research agenda for three areas: the possible decay of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) regime, the threat that nuclear weapons pose to democratic institutions, and the relationship between ethics and the domestic political dimensions of nuclearization. My aim is not to present definitive positions, but to initiate debate with the hope of advancing our ethical understanding of these complex issues.
On Amartya Sen and "The Idea of Justice" [Full Text]
Chris Brown
"The Idea of Justice" summarizes and extends many of the themes Amartya Sen has been engaged with for the last quarter century: economic versus political rights, cultural relativism and the origin of notions such as human rights, and entitlements and their relation to gender equality.
The Commitments of Cosmopolitanism [Abstract] (PDF)
Rekha Nath
Ten years have passed since the United Nations member states committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goals, central among which are the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger worldwide by 2015. Two recent books, Gillian Brock's Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account and Darrel Moellendorf's Global Inequality Matters, serve as timely reminders that progress toward meeting these morally urgent goals has been minimal. Rich with empirical detail, these books bridge the gap between theory and practice in presenting carefully crafted accounts of the obligations we have to non-compatriots and by offering practical proposals for how we might get closer to meeting these obligations. Among the host of theoretical questions common to the two books are: What commitments are entailed by a cosmopolitan perspective—one that recognizes the equal moral worth and inherent dignity of all individuals? Can the demands of justice be said to apply outside the state, and if so, why? How should global institutions be designed, and who are the bearers of responsibility for their design? What distributive principles would treat all individuals worldwide justly?
United Nations Justice: Legal and Judicial Reform in Governance Operations
Scott N. Carlson
Calin Trenkov-Wermuth's "United Nations Justice" provides a thoughtful and useful contribution to the understanding of how UN governance operations have evolved.
New Perspectives on Liberal Peacebuilding
Andrea Kathryn Taletnino
This edited volume moves beyond the more common analyses of what works and what does not in building sustainable peace in order to raise deeper theoretical questions, such as what can be realistically expected of peacebuilding efforts
Carl Schmitt and the Politics of Hostility, Violence and Terror
Elizabeth Frazer
Gabriella Slomp's "Carl Schmitt and the Politics of Hostility, Violence and Terror" examines Schmitt's work as a whole, but sets out in particular to draw out contradictions and tensions in Schmitt's theoretical endorsement of authoritarian state power.
This section contains a round-up of recent notable books in the field of international affairs.