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Ethics & International Affairs
Annual Journal of the
Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs
Volume 15, No.1, 2001
Overcoming corruption and authoritarian government in developing countries is hampered by global institutional arrangements. In particular, international borrowing and resource privileges, which entitle those exercising power in a country to borrow in its name and to effect legally valid transfers of ownership rights in its resources, can be obstacles to achieving democracy. These international conventions greatly increase the incentives toward attempts at coups d'état, especially in countries with a large resource sector. In exploring how this problem might be highlighted and addressed, it is essential to understand that affluent societies have a great interest in upholding the prevailing institutional arrangements: Their banks benefit from their international lending and, far more importantly, their firms and people benefit greatly from cheap resource supplies. Institutional reform is more likely, then, to come from the developing countries. Thus, fledgling democracies may be able to improve their stability through constitutional amendments that bar future unconstitutional governments from borrowing in the country's name and from conferring ownership rights in its public property. Such amendments would render insecure the claims of those who lend to, or buy from, dictators, thus reducing the rewards of coups d'état. This strategy might be resisted by the more affluent societies, but such resistance could perhaps be overcome if many developing countries pursued the proposed strategy together, and if some moral support emerged among the citizenries of affluent societies.
Universal jurisdiction and the existence of an International Criminal Court (ICC) under the Rome Statute provide a framework through which true reconciliation can be achieved simultaneously with truth and justice. The ICC and universal jurisdiction can be viewed as laying out objective limits on the power of domestic and international actors to seek peace at any cost. This paper argues that those objective limits are not necessarily inimical to a just peace, nor are an undue burden on peacemakers. On the contrary, they can set parameters whereby a just and lasting peace can be differentiated from impunity achieved through blackmail. The first step is to take a hard look at whether international standards of accountability for gross abuses have been met. At the same time, the examination of any specific scheme of domestic accountability cannot be done on a blanket basis. It will require a close look at conditions prevailing in the country, both at the time the scheme was adopted and later; at the policies adopted and how they were meant to advance the process of national reconciliation; at who adopted those measures and how; and at concrete applications of the scheme to individual cases. Even applying this exacting standard, there will be cases in which the best course of action for the ICC and for third country courts will be to defer to the greater wisdom of local actors operating in good faith, and to decline to prosecute.
Although retribution for past human rights violations has its place in post-conflict processes of transition and reconciliation, there are many present and foreseeable circumstances in which the case for immunity, amnesty, or sheer forbearance is significantly stronger than Juan E. Méndez's approach to this question can admit. Disagreement about justice is an ineradicable part of political life and a leading cause of violent conflict. Reconciliation cannot always presuppose or await a shared moral understanding; frequently enough, it requires an agreement to disagree, even about fundamental principles -- at least with respect to their retrospective application. Where the parties to violent conflict have seen fit to set aside issues of retrospective justice in the service of peace and reconciliation, outsiders, who do not bear the costs of conflict and instability, should second-guess that decision only with the greatest reluctance. They should not look to international human rights standards and mechanisms for a universal solution.
This essay reviews the current stagnated state of arms control and makes three arguments. First, despite the dramatic changes in the security climate with the end of the Cold War, there has been no comparable change in U.S. government thinking about the role of nuclear weapons and arms control in security policy. U.S. nuclear weapons policy remains mired in Cold War paradigms of threat and deterrence. But continued reliance on a nuclear threat and large nuclear arsenals undermines U.S. efforts to stem weapons proliferation, which ultimately represents the greatest long-term threat to the United States. The United States should abandon deterrence as the organizing principle for arms control in favor of "sustainable disarmament." This means pursuing verifiable international agreements to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons dramatically, with elimination as the goal; reducing the serious inequities of the current global arms control scheme; and pursuing policies that reduce the legitimacy and utility of nuclear weapons for all states. Second, the global arms control process is becoming more multilateral, transnational and pluralistic, and the major powers no longer entirely control the agenda. Third, and finally, successful arms control over the long haul, both conventional and nuclear, will depend on highlighting the environmental, medical and humanitarian consequences of weapons, not just their role in national security policies.
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Nuclear deterrence will be an essential part of U.S. security policy as long as nuclear weapons exist. It is a fact of life, rather than a Cold War artifact. Much progress can be made in reducing the centrality of nuclear weapons in U.S. foreign policy and in drawing closer to the ultimate goal of disarmament within the framework of a policy of nuclear deterrence. Tannenwald champions disarmament as an "idea whose time has come," but in order for disarmament not to threaten U.S. security dramatically, it must be 100 percent effective-and verifiably so. Because of the extreme military advantage that nuclear weapons grant their possessors, no nuclear weapons state can afford the relative loss of power that would come from disarming while another state did not. Thus, total nuclear disarmament is a difficult, if not impossible, proposition. Nuclear weapons states need to maintain their arsenals, which means they must maintain a doctrine of deterrence.
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The proliferation of internal conflicts fueled by small arms poses a grave threat to peace, democracy, and the rule of law. The weapons of choice in today's conflicts are not big-ticket items like long-range missiles, tanks, and fighter planes, but small and frighteningly accessible weapons ranging from handguns, carbines, and assault rifles on up to machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and shoulder-fired missiles. In conflict zones from Colombia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, picking up a gun has become the preferred route for generating income, obtaining political power, and generating "employment" for young people, many no more than children, who have little prospect of securing a decent education or a steady job. Ending the cycle of violence fueled by small arms must become a top priority for the international community. No single treaty or set of actions, however, will "solve" the problem of light weapons proliferation. What is needed is a series of overlapping measures involving stricter laws and regulations, greater transparency, and innovative diplomatic and economic initiatives. If efforts to deal comprehensively with the supply and demand factors fueling the trade in small arms and light weapons are sustained and expanded over the next decade, rampant small arms proliferation can be contained.
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A country's right to levy taxes is a fundamental aspect of its sovereignty. Without the power to tax, a government would be unable to redistribute resources among its citizens and provide public goods. The question of how tax rights should be distributed is therefore one of the oldest and most important problems of tax theory. Increased international economic integration has made this question even more important, as a larger share of economic transactions take place across national borders, giving rise to situations in which more than one country is able to tax the same base. How such conflicts are resolved affects both the ability of countries to redistribute resources domestically and the international distribution of tax revenues. The allocation of tax rights therefore raises important questions of distributive justice, questions that require a normative theory of the right to tax. This essay seeks to evaluate the current distribution of tax rights by examining whether it can in fact be justified within the main approaches to distributive justice
The language of human rights is increasingly being advocated as a framework for policy dialogue. To make this feasible, indicators must be developed that help to hold the state accountable for its policies, that help to guide and improve policy, and that are sensitive to local contexts without sacrificing the commitment to the universality of rights. Can it be done? This article examines ongoing attempts to devise indicators and argues that they are not based in a sufficiently clear conceptual framework. It argues for greater intelligibility in devising indicators concerning what they should be assessing, how to reflect the universalism of rights across different contexts, and how to weigh the conflicts of interest that characterize the public policy decision-making process.