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Ethics & International Affairs
Annual Journal of the
Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs
Volume 12, 1998
Germany’s unilateral recognition in 1991 of the secessionist states of Slovenia and Croatia was an act of irresponsible diplomacy. Yet it was less a product of cynicism and sinister intent than a hastily assembled attempt to apply the former West German state’s acquired techniques of multilateral diplomacy to the radically altered circumstance of the unified Germany’s place in Europe. The Kohl government sought a policy on the Balkan crisis that would both appeal to the self-conscious pacifist-internationalist strain in German public opinion and avoid direct German and European responsibility for the largely unknown consequences of that policy. The outcome was an initiative that internationalized the Balkan crisis even as it defined it as a cause of democratically expressed aspirations of national self-determination. Bonn’s actions constituted less a crime than a tragic mistake, in so far as they let pass a critical opportunity to influence, perhaps decisively, the entire discussion of the ethically legitimate purposes of sovereign statehood in the post-Cold War world.
This essay poses the question of whether grassroots organizations can provide an alternative center of authority to the state in inducing multinational corporations to incorporate human rights criteria in their investment and trade decisions. In examining the anti-apartheid movement and attempts to replicate it in the 1990s in the campaigns against corporate involvement in Burma and Nigeria, it presents a mixed picture. In each case, citizen pressures increased the costs and risks of “business as usual” with target states and induced corporations either to undertake social obligations or to disengage beyond what was required by national regulations or market forces. At the same time, nonstate actors are limited by the fact that they can induce but, unlike the state, cannot command corporate behavior; their success is dependent upon state policies; and their most powerful weapon—municipal procurement power—has been predominantly a U.S. phenomenon.
How do governments deal with human rights violations committed by former regimes? How can adequate justice for the formerly oppressed be provided at the same time as recovery from the abuses of the former regime is promoted? For South Africa the solution has been the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), whose goal is to reconcile former enemies by providing amnesty to perpetrators who disclose the truth about the past to victims. This essay presents an overview of the TRC—its establishment, procedures, and operating principles—and examines the way in which the commission emphasizes forgiveness rather than retribution for past wrongs. This approach focuses on victims rather than perpetrators, and healing rather than punishment. While the TRC has a clear political focus, it is at its heart a deeply theological and ethical initiative.
The capacity to focus on the issues of humanitarian intervention signals the maturation of the field of ethics and international affairs. Interventions in Bosnia, Rwanda, Haiti, and Somalia, for example, indicate a new willingness on the part of the international community to involve itself in the internal affairs of states. However, acts of humanitarian intervention bring with them concerns of consistency and effectiveness, which require deep attention and careful response. Issues of state sovereignty versus moral imperatives continue to challenge external actors. This essay discusses the subjective and objective changes that have occurred within international relations with regard to humanitarian intervention and examines intervention from the realist and liberal theoretical perspectives. Using traditional liberalist theory as a basis, the essay offers a new version of liberalism in which the historic guarantee of state sovereignty becomes subordinate to human rights claims, thereby supplying a justification for humanitarian intervention.
Issues surrounding forcible humanitarian intervention have assumed new dimensions as the emphasis within international law has shifted from UN Charter Article 2(4), which addresses the legitimacy of cross-border military actions by states, to UN Charter Article 2(7) addressing intervention by the UN in the internal affairs of states. This change is of concern to both Muslims and Christians, as there can be no collective international response to intervention unless it embodies a cross-cultural consensus that includes both faith communities. This essay compares Christian and Islamic teaching on the question of forcible humanitarian intervention and concludes that the traditions are sufficiently similar to enable agreement on how and when to intervene in a humanitarian crisis.
This essay examines the moral attitudes that underlie commitments to humanitarian intervention. Specifically, the essay seeks to explain how respect and empathy together create the ethical imperative for humanitarian intervention. Traditionally excluded from the formal discourse on humanitarian intervention, empathy is presented as an integral component of making the “ought” of humanitarian intervention psychologically feasible. The essay presents a slightly revised definition of empathy, in which empathy is the cognitive ability to place oneself in the world of another, imagining all of the realities, feelings, and circumstances of that person in the context of their world. This differs from the notion that feelings of empathy are limited to those with whom one shares a close relationship. The essay contends that the ability to identify with others is necessary in order to mobilize the feelings of respect for others into acts of humanitarian intervention.
International ethics scholars have argued that because postmodern, poststructural, and critical theorists view ethics as contextual, these approaches have little to offer to the consideration of ethics and international affairs. However, an examination of ethical issues through postmodern and critical perspectives reveals that these approaches are not as nihilistic as their critics contend. Postmodern, feminist, poststructural, and Frankfurt School theories provide insight and direction to students of international ethics by providing the theoretical foundations for discourse ethics. The essay contends that discourse ethics offers a procedural program for addressing urgent ethical dilemmas in world politics, concluding that the likelihood of peace and justice is greatly increased when the urge to ground ethics in Enlightenment certainty is abandoned.
The notion of the “deserving poor” used to refer to those who were poor through no fault of their own, providing the basis of selection on welfare policy. Increasingly, across a wide range of policy initiatives throughout the developed world, it is coming to refer to contractual and quasi-contractual entitlements. Morally, this is a dubious proposition: contractual entitlements are based on bargaining power in a way that is antithetical to morality as commonly conceived. Institutionally, it is inappropriate: the whole point of the welfare state, as commonly conceived, is to adjust and override market-based distributions of precisely the sorts that contractualist prescriptions would enshrine in social welfare policy. Because the poor lack the bargaining power available to the rich, contractual bargaining between the two sides merely reinforces the ability of the rich to turn their “might” into “right.” Rather than base social welfare policies on contractual bargaining, policies should focus on the duties the strong members of society have toward the weak: the poor should clearly receive more, and the rich pay more, than either group has bargained for.
The land ethic, articulated by Aldo Leopold, is a biocentric, holistic approach to environmental ethics that values ecosystems in their own right. The 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment placed environmental problems on the international agenda, but since that time the international community has had limited success in dealing with environmental challenges. Many of the shortcomings of global approaches to the environment can be linked to the weak ethical underpinnings of environmental law and policy, stemming from the fact that international law fails to take into account the intrinsic value of nature. Integrating environmental policy formulation with the land ethic would remedy the inadequacies of current international law and policy, which are based on the Westphalian state system. This essay examines the land ethic in the contexts of just war theory, economic liberalism, and international environmental law, offering a new outlook for the behavior of states in matters affecting ecosystems.
A group of statesmen, known as the InterAction Council, in consultation with theologians and philosophers representing many cultures, has come up with a proposed Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities. It contains rules of behavior for all people based on what its authors believe to be a global consensus centering on the Golden Rule. In unveiling a global ethic, the council has, perhaps unwittingly, opened up the so-far-neglected question of what a complete moral system for world society would look like. This essay analyses the Declaration and its related report with regard to two areas: its ecumenical religious basis and its theme of responsibility, with particular attention to the question of balance between rights and responsibilities. The question is then asked: Does a global ethic imply community? An answer to this question is sought by examining Richard Alexander’s new biological theory, which presents ethics as a means of pursuing interests through collectivity. The text of the Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities is appended.