CIAO DATE: 12/04

Ethics & International Affairs
Annual Journal of the
Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs

Volume 18, No. 1 (Winter 2004)

Articles

• The Preventive Use of Force: A Cosmopolitan Institutional Proposal
  Allen Buchanan and Robert O. Keohane

  Preventive use of force may be defined as the initiation of military action in anticipation of harmful actions that are neither presently occurring nor imminent. This essay explores the permissibility of preventive war from a cosmopolitan normative perspective, one that recognizes the basic human rights of all persons, not just citizens of a particular country or countries. It argues that preventive war can only be justified if it is undertaken within an appropriate rule-governed, institutional framework that is designed to help protect vulnerable countries against unjustified interventions while also avoiding unacceptable risks of the costs of inaction. The key to ensuring the fairness of rules governing the preventive use of force is accountability.

• The Global Warming Tragedy and the Dangerous Illusion of the Kyoto Protocol
  Stephen M. Gardiner

  In 2001, 178 of the world's nations reached agreement on a treaty to combat global climate change brought on by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. Despite the notable omission of the United States, representatives of the participants, and many newspapers around the world, expressed elation. Margot Wallstrüm, the environment commissioner of the European Union, went so far as to declare, "Now we can go home and look our children in the eye and be proud of what we have done."

  In this article, I argue for two theses. First, the rhetoric and euphoria surrounding the 2001 deal is misplaced. This is not, as is often said, because the Kyoto agreement is too demanding but rather because it is much too weak. In particular, the Kyoto agreement does little to protect future generations. On the contrary, (at best) it seems to be a prudent wait-and-see policy for the present generation, narrowly defined. Hence, even those countries who have endorsed the Kyoto agreement should be wary of looking their children in the eye, and none should relish facing their children's children.

  Second, the failure of the Kyoto agreement can be explained in terms of the underlying structure of the problem. Climate change involves the intersection of a complex set of intergenerational and intragenerational collective action problems. This structure, and in particular its intergenerational aspect, has not been adequately appreciated. Yet until it is, we are doomed to an ineffectual environmental policy.

• Global Warming: More Common Than Tragic
  Elizabeth R. DeSombre

  Global warming is indeed a difficult international environmental problem to address: it has tragedy of the commons characteristics, and problems of time horizons and uncertainty. But previous efforts at international cooperation on other environmental issues such as ozone depletion suggest that international cooperation should be possible—though difficult—on climate change. Cooperation on issues that involve long time horizons suggests that the present generation is not calculating utility quite so narrowly as game theorists posit. Experience also suggests that successful cooperation on climate change will start with measures so small as to seem inconsequential, but will set in place an institutional and scientific process that will ultimately result in much more significant cooperative efforts. Rather than representing a tragedy, the Kyoto Protocol (or something much like it) could represent the beginnings of a process in which current generations take the first steps at collective action that dramatically improve the lives of future generations. Those who are concerned about the weakness of the Kyoto Protocol should first focus on persuading the United States to join—since this is the best way to let the process work and avoid a tragedy of the commons.

• Sharing the Riches of the Earth: Democratizing Natural Resource-Led Development
  Keith Slack

  Many developing countries are attempting to use their natural resource endowments — notably oil, natural gas, and minerals such as gold — as the basis for economic growth and development. Recent history, however, indicates that countries that depend heavily on resource extraction do more poorly on a variety of economic indicators, including growth rates, education levels, and income inequality. This is due in significant part to the way in which wealth derived from resource extraction is concentrated in the hands of a small elite, which often misuses these revenues through corruption, poorly planned investments, and other means. This contrasts with other kinds of economic activity, such as agriculture, in which benefits are distributed more widely. Thus, a key to increasing the development and poverty reduction benefit value of resource extraction is breaking elite control of these revenues and increasing public involvement in decision-making related to their use. Doing so would enhance the likelihood that these funds would be employed with greater concern for the needs of the populace. The experiences of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia highlight the importance of increasing distributive justice and public participation in resource revenue distribution and provide insights into how this could be implemented in resource-dependent economies.

  Symposium: War and Self-Defense

• War and Self-Defense
  David Rodin

  When the Bush and Blair administrations justified the 2003 war on Iraq as an act of preemptive self-defense, this was greeted in many quarters with understandable skepticism. How can the right of self-defense be legitimately invoked when no prior aggressive attack has occurred and there is no evidence that one is imminent? This question, much debated in the months leading up to the war, invites us to reflect critically on the content of the right of self-defense. Yet there is a deeper question to be asked about the idea of a war of self-defense; namely, how is it that war can be considered an act of self-defense at all? How exactly is it that the concept of self-defense can provide a justification for war? It is this question that I ask in War and Self-Defense and the answer I arrive at is a surprising one.

• Self-Defense and the Obligations to Kill and to Die
  Cheyney C. Ryan

  David Rodin's book, War and Self Defense, is a subtle and provocative analysis of the claim of self-defense and its relation to modern war. Building on his analysis, I raise some further issues about self-defense as a justification of modern nation state war. Principal among these is what I call the conscription paradox: if the state's right to make war is grounded in the right of its citizens to self-defense, how do we explain the right of modern states to conscript its citizens into the military — and order them to die, if need be? This problem has been acknowledged by liberal individual thinkers over the years, but not solved. It raises questions of whether a coherent account of current nation state military practice can be grounded in individual self-defense.

• War as Self-Defense
  Jeff McMahan

• Innocent Attackers and Rights of Self-Defense
  David R. Mapel

• Self-Defense in International Law and Rights of Persons
  Fernando R. Tesón

• Beyond National Defense
  David Rodin

  In War and Self-Defense I attempt to generate a dilemma for the just war theory by arguing that the right of national defense cannot be reduced to personal rights of self-defense, nor can it be explained through an analogy with them. Jeff McMahan, David Mapel, and Fernando Tesón doubt this conclusion. In response I argue, first, that their objections are not as opposed to my basic project as they may at first appear. This is because they are premised on a conception of national defense that differs substantially from mainstream just war theory and international law. Second, I argue that McMahan's and Mapel's defense of the reductive argument is unconvincing because (among other things) it is premised on an inadequate view of the norm of proportionality. On the other hand Tesón's defense of the analogical view, based on a conception of the moral value of the just institutions of a legitimate state, cannot account for certain basic features of the international legal and moral order. These include the presumption that even unjust states can possess the right of self-defense against aggression and that it is impermissible for one just state to conquer and rule another just state. Finally I argue that the attempt to bolster the right of national defense through the concept of punishment is inappropriate because it ignores the crucial requirement for proper moral authority in the agent of punishment.

Recent Books on Ethics and International Affairs

• Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World, Jean Bethke Elshtain
  Reviewed by John Langan, S. J.

• The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force, Martha Finnemore
  Reviewed by Sonia Cardenas

  In The Purpose of Intervention, Martha Finnemore probes how shifts in the international normative context have shaped state action, even in an area where conventional accounts about the role of power and material interests would seem to prevail. More broadly, The Purpose of Intervention sheds light on the ways in which both international society and its conceptions of the legitimate use of force have evolved historically. This concise book is intended for a wide audience, including those interested in security studies, constructivism, and legal scholarship, as well as normative theory and ethics.

• The Real Environment Crisis: Why Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environment's Number One Enemy, Jack M. Hollander
  Reviewed by Dale Jamieson

  Poverty is the cause of the real environmental crisis, according to Jack Hollander. Affluence is the environment's friend, not its enemy. Rather than squandering our resources on such questionable endeavors as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we should lift up poor people in the developing world. This is an important message that many Americans need to hear. It is stunningly illustrated by the cover photograph of a shantytown built on a dump in the Philippines.

• Order and Justice in International Relations, Rosemary Foot, John Lewis Gaddis, and Andrew Hurrell, eds.
  Reviewed by Gregory T. Russell

• The Moral Foundations of Politics, Ian Shapiro
  Reviewed by Deen K. Chatterjee

• Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Miracle or Model?, Lyn S. Graybill
  Reviewed by David Rothstein

• Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, Paul Farmer
  Reviewed by Sarah Zaidi