CIAO DATE: 06/2011
Volume: 25, Issue: 1
Spring 2011
Joel H. Rosenthal
What is it about a twenty-fifth anniversary that seems to demand that we pay attention to the occasion? The obvious response, of course, is the issue of longevity—that someone or something has endured the various travails of a quarter century and, by all appearances, is continuing onward. But surely there is something else, something more essential at issue than merely endurance. There is, I think, the issue of recognition that is of importance here—the recognition that something has been sufficiently valued and appreciated as to warrant perpetuation. That, I suspect, is what we are celebrating when wetake this moment to reflect on our achievements and recommit ourselves to our stated mission.
Middle-Ground Ethics: Can One Be Politically Realistic Without Being a Political Realist?
Terry Nardin
Thinking about international affairs has oscillated between idealism and realism throughout the modern period. Moralists continue to search for a way to combine what is reasonable in each in an ethically defensible middle between those extremes.
Face Reality? After You!--A Call for Leadership on Climate Change
Henry Shue
In Joseph Heller's comic war novel, Catch-22, the catch-22 of the title refers to a supposed military regulation that allowed one to be relieved of military service if one was insane, but further provided that no one who realized he would be better off out of military service could possibly be insane. Humanity's so far leaderless approach to dealing with rapidly accelerating climate change embodies a similar, but profoundly tragic, catch-22 that has, among other twists and contradictions, transmuted justice into paralysis. Many thought that the natural global leader of the effort to gain control of global climate change would be the United States, with its splendid cadre of scientists and its history of technological innovation. But our politicians have failed to be worthy of our scientists or of the trust we citizens have placed in them. Facing reality appears to be increasingly unpopular among those who pass as our national political leaders. Those who refuse to face reality often find that what they ignore may come back to bite them, and worse, it may hurt others who trust them with their well-being. It is unclear which members of the U.S. Senate have sold their souls to the fossil-fuel interests and which have simply closed their minds. But the effect is the same: the facts on the ground—and in the air, water, and ice of the planet—are racing further and further ahead of the faltering U.S. political efforts to respond to them. And the American failure of political leadership is one major factor that is crippling efforts to negotiate multilateral action at the international level.
Clean Trade in Natural Resources
Leif Wenar
The "resource curse" can strike countries that derive a large portion of their national income from exporting high-value natural resources, such as oil, gas, metals, and gems. Resource-exporting countries are subject to four overlapping curses: they are more prone to authoritarianism, they tend to suffer more corruption, they are at a higher risk for civil wars, and they exhibit greater economic instability. The correlations between resources and such pathologies as authoritarianism, corruption, civil conflict, and economic dysfunction are evident in the list of the five major African oil exporters: Algeria, Angola, Libya, Nigeria, and Sudan. The recent histories of mineral exporters support the correlations: for example, "blood diamonds" fueled Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war, and the continuing conflict in the metal-rich eastern Congo has caused up to 6 million deaths. The phenomenon is not solely African: Burma, Yemen, and Turkmenistan, for example, are also resource cursed. Moreover, poor governance in resource-cursed countries can engender follow-on pathologies, such as a propensity to cause environmental damage both domestically (for example, through the destruction of forests) and globally (through increased greenhouse gas emissions). Most research on the resource curse has focused on the institutions of exporting countries. This essay focuses instead on importing countries, especially those in North America and Europe. I survey how the resource curse impedes core interests of importing states. I then discuss how the policies of importing states drive the resource curse, and how these policies violate their existing international commitments. The second half of the paper describes a policy framework for importing states that can improve international trade in resources for both importers and exporters.
Precommitment Regimes for Intervention: Supplementing the Security Council (PDF)
Robert O. Keohane, Allen Buchanan
We consider two different types of alternatives to the Security Council for authorizing military action across borders: a democratic coalition and a precommitment regime, by which a state could authorize intervention within its territory in advance and designate the intervenors.
Globalizing Responsibility for Climate Change
Steve Vanderheiden
How is the just assignment of climate change mitigation costs related to the fair allocation of burdens for climate change adaptation? In distributing the costs associated with climate change, most scholars have focused exclusively upon mitigation burdens, which reduce ongoing contributions to climate change, primarily through greenhouse gas abatement efforts. Few consider the distribution of adaptation costs, which concern projects that seek to minimize harm from human-induced climate change. This article explores both, grounding each in the justice framework appropriate to each activity, with mitigation efforts based in distributive justice and adaptation activities in corrective justice, and outlines an overarching account of responsibility that! links the two. From such an account, it suggests, a more coherent view of the tradeoffs between mitigation and adaptation is possible, enabling a more integrative policy framework for linking ongoing efforts in one category with required burdens in the other.
"The Evolution of International Security Studies" by Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen
Ken Booth
The book contains a recognizable mix of Copenhagen and English School viewpoints, which, according to Ken Booth, means that there is altogether too little about war, and altogether too much about the niceties within constructivist and poststructuralist discourses.
"International Criminal Law and Philosophy," Larry May and Zachary Hoskins, eds.
Pablo Kalmanovitz
"International Criminal Law and Philosophy" raises fundamental questions and examines novel issues in the emerging field of international criminal law. May and Hoskins have provided a valuable contribution to current multidisciplinary debates on the subject.
C.A.J. Coady
Michael Gross believes that much contemporary warfare is so different from past armed conflicts that many of the old moral and legal prohibitions should no longer apply.
"Protectors of Privacy: Regulating Personal Data in the Global Economy" by Abraham L. Newman
Judith Wagner DeCew
Abraham Newman has written a thoughtful and provocative book about the protection of privacy and how it has evolved in two dramatically different ways in the European Union and the United States over the past 50 years.
"Measuring Justice: Primary Goods and Capabilities," Harry Brighouse and Ingrid Robeyns, eds.
Laura Valentini
In this rich collection, Harry Brighouse and Ingrid Robeyns bring together distinguished philosophers and political theorists to debate the virtues and vices of competing metrics of justice.