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Ethics & International Affairs
Annual Journal of the
Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs
Volume 10, 1996
Intervention often violates both respect for state sovereignty and the right to self-determination. McMahan focuses on the latter ethical dimension rather than the former political and legal one, although his claims have important implications for issues of state sovereignty. He challenges the common assumption that respect for self-determination requires an almost exceptionless doctrine of nonintervention by first defining the notions of “intervention” and “self-determination,” and then analyzing Walzer’s doctrine of nonintervention. The recognition that there are different ideals of self-determination results in a less rigid and more permissive doctrine of nonintervention.
The failure of the United Nations and other regional organizations to effectively “keep the peace” is more often than not attributable to a lack of commitment to true collective security on the part of the international community than to flaws in the organizations themselves. Kegley argues that the former dominance of political realism is finally being challenged and offers prescriptions for effective multilateral peacekeeping activities. The greatest obstacle to the creation of a mechanism for multilateral peacekeeping is an absence of a moral consensus in a world where the nature of rapidly changing threats to global peace make it difficult to share a common vision.
In a world increasingly both fragmented and globalized, there is a need for a normative framework of values linking individual and group concerns by means of a conception of collective human rights. Felice argues that individual human rights, which have proven to be of enormous value in the twentieth century, must be extended to communities ranging from the family unit to the entire human community.
Adler and Barnett demonstrate how changes occurring in international politics create the nostalgia of security communities, a concept made prominent by Karl Deutsch nearly forty years ago. The realist-based models in security debates are giving way to the constructivist approach to possibilities of peace by establishing communities rather than by balancing power. By thinking the unthinkable—that community exists at the international level, shaping security politics and developing a pacific disposition—the authors intend to draw attention to the concept’s importance for understanding contemporary events.
Pierce challenges the argument that economic sanctions are always morally preferable to the use of military force. His analysis shows that economic sanctions also inflict great pain, suffering, and physical harm on the innocent population of noncombatants and that small-scale military operations are sometimes preferable. Lori Fisler Damrosch’s framework for ethical analysis, Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars, and the case of Haiti are used to support his argument.
Dr. Myers challenges the legitimacy of the traditional concept of the “just war,” revived during the Vietnam War and with the publication of Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars in 1977. The doctrine’s major flaw, says Myers, is that it allows self-interested interpretation in a world of sovereign states—“Whose justice are we talking about?” he asks. Myers nonetheless validates the theory’s intention and its utility in coping with war.
The controversies over the “National History Standards” and the Smithsonian’s abortive effort to mount a fiftieth anniversary exhibit on the decision to drop the atomic bomb, along with insights drawn from the opening of former Soviet and Eastern European archives, highlight the “moral equivalency” debate being waged over the writing and teaching of Cold War history. Gaddis suggests the need for historians to rethink some of their academic approaches to this subject, using a moral as opposed to a materialist framework.
Building on an earlier argument that isolationism may well be America’s natural state, Schlesinger explains how the apparent rejection of isolationism during the long standoff with the Soviet Union during the Cold War was nothing more than a reaction to what was perceived as a direct and urgent threat to the security of the United States. In the wake of the Cold War’s end, the incompatibility between collective international action and conceptions of national interest has highlighted the difficulties of democracies in sending their armies to war, especially those that do not directly threaten national security. While much more can and should be done to enhance the effectiveness of global organizations already in place, what is needed, Schlesinger argues, is both a reexamination of the Wilsonian doctrine of collective security and a greater concentration on preventive diplomacy.
Brzezinski shapes his discussion around three “new dimensions” of human rights: the protection of human rights from the arbitrary power of the state, the institutionalization of democracy, and the need to confront the potential exploitation of human individuality by science. Brzezinski predicts that the interface between ethics and science will be the new frontier of politics, and it will place on the shoulders of democratic leaders, and ultimately on all those who are concerned with human rights, the obligation to be at least part-time scientists and philosophers.
Review of Ethics, Killing and War, by Richard Norman; The Ethics of War and Peace: Religious and Secular Perspectives, by Terry Nardin, ed; The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World, by Michael Howard, George J. Andreopoulos, and Mark R. Shulman, eds.; and War and Law Since 1945, by Geoffrey Best. The four books reviewed here approach questions regarding the ethical and legal constraints on the use of military power in international relations, from philosophical, historical, cross-cultural, religious, and legal perspectives. The diverse orientations of the reviewed works are evidence of the depth of the field of study, and cumulatively they represent a thorough review of the state of the discussion.
Review of One For All: The Logic of Group Conflict, by Russell Hardin; On Nationality, by David Miller; and Liberal Nationalism, by Yael Tamir. These works attempt to expose and understand why people have national identities and why they believe themselves to be morally bound to give priority to the interests of their own nation over the rest of humanity. They attempt to determine what the moral consequences of this kind of identification are, such as in cases when conflict arises.
Reviews: Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, by Michael Walzer: Thin morality (shared values) is a component of a society’s thick morality (unique moral culture), but the former have relevance only when embedded within the latter
Ethics and International Politics, by Luigi Bonanate: Can the conduct of states be judged morally? Yes
Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West, by David Rieff: A lament for those who died in Bosnia and an indictment of those who let them die (Europe and the U.S.)
Civil Society in the Middle East, vol. 2, by Augustus Richard Norton: Second and final volume of essays
Peacemaking, by Gerard F. Powers, Drew Christiansen, S.J., and Robert T. Hennemeyer, eds. and For Peace in God’s World, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America : The two works take ethical questions of war and peace out of the academy and pose them at the level of parish, congregation, and individual conscience
The Path to Power, Margaret Thatcher: Second volume in Thatcher’s memoirs, covering the years up to her election victory in 1979, her rise to political power, as well as a narrative of British political life during the post-war period.