CIAO DATE: 07/03

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

Volume 17, No. 1, 2003

• Editor’s Note
  Joel H. Rosenthal

Roundtable
Evaluating the Preemptive Use of Force

• Introduction
  Anthony F. Lang, Jr.

• Self-Defense in an Imperfect World
  Chris Brown

  The so-called Bush Doctrine which appears to legitimize anticipatory war is accused of blurring the conventional distinction between preemption—a legitimate response to an immediate danger—and prevention—an illegitimate violation of the norm of nonintervention in response to a putative long run threat. This distinction, however, rests upon the assumption that if a potential threat is identified early enough the international community, via the UN, possesses the resources to respond effectively and legitimately—which is not necessarily the case. At the present stage of development of international law states remain the ultimate judges of what is necessary for their security, although they should be required to explain and justify their actions to the wider world. Moreover, prudential considerations reinforce the normative requirement that preventive action should be undertaken only as a last resort.

  In the specific case of Iraq, such prudential considerations may warn against preventive action. However, the moral status of the current sanctions regime is doubtful, and, given the nature of the Iraqi dictatorship, a case could be made for regime change. This illustrates the general point that the issue of preventive war needs to be understood in the context of other violations of the norm of nonintervention such as humanitarian interventions.

• Letting the Exception Prove the Rule
  Michael Byers

  U.S. government lawyers excel in shaping international rules to accommodate the interests of their country. For example, there were at least four possible justifications for using force in Afghanistan: intervention by invitation, UN Security Council authorization, humanitarian intervention, and self-defense. The United States focused on the latter justification, in part out of desire to extend the right of self-defense to include action against state sponsors of terrorism. More recently, a claim of preemptive self-defense has been advanced. This too is directed at changing the law, since the UN Charter precludes unauthorized preemption.

  The claim involves two assertions: that the pre-Charter customary international law remains applicable today; and that the limited right of preemption in that law should be stretched to include more distant challenges. If widely accepted, these assertions would introduce greater ambiguity into the law and thus more scope for U.S. power and influence in determining when states can intervene.

  Yet most threats to international peace can be dealt with adequately under existing rules, provided that countries are willing to cooperate. For this reason, it hardly makes sense to change the law to accommodate the truly exceptional. If a serious threat exists, no invitation can be obtained, and the Security Council is not prepared to act, the U.S. should simply violate the law without advancing strained and potentially destabilizing legal justifications. By doing so it would allow its actions to be assessed subsequently in terms of their political and moral legitimacy, with a view to mitigation rather than exculpation.

• Striking First: A History of Thankfully Lost Opportunities
  Richard K. Betts

  Decisions for or against initiating war are not considered by international law. Governments cite international law to justify whatever decision they take, asserting interpretations that conform to their own judgment of moral warrant grounded in strategic necessity. Preventive and preemptive wars are usually seen by their perpetrators as defensive in purpose, even if operationally offensive, and as legitimate. The most effective arguments against initiating war (rather than remaining in a defensive posture, prepared to hold against attack initiated by an enemy) are strategic, not legal.

  Preventive wars are common but hard to justify, since it is almost impossible to be sure that an adversary will strike in the future if not struck first. Preemptive wars are easier to justify, but are rare. Even those that have occurred have been mistaken more often than not. There are more historical cases of proposed preventive wars that later events showed would have been mistaken than there are of preventive wars that were not undertaken, but that later events suggest should have been. The Rhinelands crisis of 1936, proposals for preventive war against the Soviet Union and China, Israel’s attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, and other cases illustrate these points.

• Just War, Not Prevention
  Thomas M. Nichols

  In the debates over whether to remove the Iraqi regime, questions of preemption and prevention have obscured the most important issue: justice. A war to topple Saddam Hussein is not only justifiable on legal grounds, such as Iraq’s violation of the 1991 cease-fire agreement or Saddam’s ceaseless attempts to acquire nuclear weapons. It would be an act of mercy that would liberate a totalitarian state. The use of force against Iraq passes even the most stringent tests of just war, a realization that makes questions of timing or method relatively less important and questions of justice paramount.

• The Slippery Slope to Preventive War
  Neta C. Crawford

  Military preemption may sometimes be legitimate. However, it must only be undertaken if the threat of harm is immediate and there is strong evidence of a potential adversary’s intention to do harm. If these criteria are met, preemptive strikes must follow jus in bello limits of proportionality and discrimination. The new U.S. policy of preemption does not meet the criteria for a sound preemptive policy. Further, the U.S. preemptive policy is imprudent because it is likely to make future conflicts more likely to the extent that it sows fear and resentment of the United States abroad. In addition, because the new U.S. policy emphasizes maintaining U.S. preeminence, the policy is actually more of a preventive war doctrine, which makes the strategy all the more dangerous and unethical.

Articles

• Beyond Coalitions of the Willing: Assessing U.S. Multilateralism
  Stewart Patrick

  Contemporary debates over the appropriate balance of unilateralism and multilateralism in U.S. foreign policy reflect disagreements not simply about the practical effectiveness of these alternative options but also about their legitimacy. Advocates of multilateral and unilateral action alike tend to bundle prudential calculations with normative claims, making assessments about costs and benefits difficult to disentangle from ethical arguments about fairness, justice, morality and obligation. Greater clarity may be possible by classifying U.S. foreign policy into six analytical categories, based on whether the aims pursued are nationalist, internationalist, or cosmopolitan and the strategies adopted to realize them are unilateral or multilateral. Each set of aims has different ethical justifications that generate and help to explain divergent attitudes and judgments about the role of multilateral cooperation in U.S. foreign policy. The article sheds new light on alleged U.S. unilateralism, showing that the U.S. decision to go it alone—or to act with others—can be motivated by the desire to advance the narrow interests of the United States, to advance the interests of all states, or to advance the interests of humanity at large. The article suggests that purely nationalist policies, whether pursued through unilateral or multilateral means, will become increasingly untenable and illegitimate as world politics becomes institutionalized and as humanity becomes integrated, albeit slowly, into a single cosmopolitan community.

• Achieving Global Economic Justice
  Assistance with Fewer Strings Attached
  Vivien Collingwood

  International organizations and bilateral donors often tie financial assistance to the undertaking of political and economic reforms—a practice known as conditionality. In recent years, the use of good governance conditionality has provoked controversy in the academic and policy worlds. So far, the issue of whether conditionality is effective in achieving compliance with good governance norms has occupied center stage in the debate. However, whether it is morally defensible to attach political conditions to financial assistance has largely been taken for granted.

  This article explores the extent to which it is morally defensible to attach good governance conditions to aid and loans in international society. It argues that the use of conditionality should be limited for two reasons. First, there is an unavoidable tension between conditionality and rights to self-determination. Second, focusing on conditionality can obscure the fact that the rules of the international economy are no less contestable than the governance of individual states, and, in turn, are in just as great a need of reform. This leads to two main conclusions. First, the use of conditionality should now be rooted in a conception of basic rights and complemented by more equitable rules in the global economy. Second, the attempt to make good governance within states an issue of global concern must be accompanied by greater democratization of the international financial institutions.

• Holding Intergovernmental Institutions to Account
  Ngaire Woods

  How can governments and peoples better hold to account international economic institutions, such as the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF? This article proposes an approach based on public accountability, advocating improvements in four areas: constitutional, political, financial, and internal accountability.

  The argument for more accountability is made with two caveats: more accountability is not always good—it can be distorting and costly; and, enhancing the accountability of international institutions should not justify increasing their jurisdiction for the sake of reducing the role of national governments. Constitutional accountability poses limits on how the institutions expand their activities, requiring the active consent of all members and particularly those most affected by their activities. Political accountability requires that those who make decisions in the organizations are directly answerable to all member governments and not just to the most powerful ones. The institutions’ uneven record and structure of financial accountability is addressed through a model of mutual restraint. Finally, the internal accountability should ensure that technical decisions are distinguishable from political decisions. A better matching of the right kinds of accountability to the activities of the organizations would improve both their effectiveness and legitimacy.

• Developing Just Monetary Arrangements
  Sanjay G. Reddy

  International monetary arrangements—the practices and rules governing the creation, distribution, and management of money and credit in the world economy—have received little attention from philosophers concerned with international distributive justice. A convincing account of international distributive justice requires a description of how these arrangements should function. International monetary arrangements currently appear to have consequences that are incompatible with a global egalitarian conception of distributive justice.

  There are at least three categories of questions— relating respectively to money supply, exchange rates, and debt—that can be raised in the international context. First, who should have control over key monetary decisions, such as how much, and on what terms, money and credit are being supplied within each monetary zone? Should this control belong to the citizens of a given monetary zone and their representatives alone? How should the benefits arising from the ability to create money be distributed internationally? Second, should the stability of exchange rates be a goal and, if so, how should the responsibility for maintaining stability be apportioned? When adjustment of exchange rates is required, who should bear the burdens associated with such adjustment? Third, what arrangements should govern the accumulation and discharge of debt in the international setting? In what respects should debt contracted by states be governed by different rules than debt contracted by private agents? What forms of conditionality may be imposed by creditors, such as international institutions, governments, or private lenders, as part of a just framework of international borrowing and repayment? These questions exemplify rather than exhaust the dilemmas that arise with regard to international monetary arrangements. Global egalitarians should imagine the alternative forms that such arrangements can take as elements of a realistic utopia.

• Who Should Get in? The Ethics of Immigration Admissions
  Joseph H. Carens

  This article explores normative questions about what legal rights settled immigrants should have in liberal democratic states. It argues that liberal democratic justice, properly understood, greatly constrains the distinctions that can be made between citizens and residents. The longer people stay in a society, the stronger their moral claims become, and after a while they pass a threshold that entitles them to virtually the same legal status as citizens and eventually easy access to citizenship itself.

• Debate: Israel’s Policy of Targeted Killing
  Israel’s Policy of Targeted Killing
  Steven R. David

  Since the beginning of the second intifada in the fall of 2000, Israel has pursued a policy in which alleged Palestinian terrorists have been hunted down and killed by government order. The policy is not one of assassination and is consistent with international law because Israel is engaged in armed conflict with terrorists, those targeted are usually killed by conventional military means, not through deception, and the targets of the attacks are not civilians but combatants or are part of a military chain of command. Targeted killing has also been affirmed by Israel’s High Court.

  Although targeted killing has been pursued by Israel throughout its history, the scale of the present effort and the use of sophisticated military assets such as helicopter gunships and jet fighters set it apart from earlier practices. The effectiveness of the policy is called into doubt because it has not prevented—and may have contributed to—record numbers of Israeli civilians being killed. The policy has also resulted in informers being revealed, intelligence resources diverted, potential negotiating partners eliminated. It has also produced murderous retaliation and international condemnation of Israel. Benefits of the policy include impeding the effectiveness of terrorist operations, keeping terrorists on the run, and deterring some attacks. In addition, it affords the Israeli public a sense of revenge and retribution.

  Because it targets the actual perpetrators of terrorism, targeted killing provides a proportionate and discriminate response to the threat Israel faces. Improving the policy will require better civilian oversight, greater care to eliminate harm to innocent bystanders, and refraining from killing political leaders. Despite its many shortcomings, Israel is justified in pursuing this policy so long as it faces a terrorist threat that the Palestinian Authority will not or cannot control.

• By Any Name Illegal and Immoral
  Response to "Israel’s Policy of Targeted Killing"
  Yael Stein

  Since November 2000, Israel has been implementing an assassination policy in the occupied territories. The Israeli policy is both illegal and immoral. The legal questions are much more complicated than would appear from David’s argument. Although individual killings may be lawful in specific cases, this debate concerns a policy providing systematic justification for such acts. Neither international nor Israeli law ensures any backing for this policy. Armed Palestinians are not combatants according to any known legal definition. They are civilians—which is the only legal alternative—and can only be attacked for as long as they actively participate in hostilities.

  The argument that this policy affords the public a sense of revenge and retribution could serve to justify acts both illegal and immoral. Clearly, lawbreakers ought to be punished. Yet, no matter how horrific their deeds, as the targeting of Israeli civilians indeed is, they should be punished according to the law. David’s arguments could, in principle, justify the abolition of formal legal systems altogether.

  The Israeli government has not endorsed the minor changes of policy that David suggests, and for a reason. Israel’s initial refusal to acknowledge the very existence of this policy and even its later hesitant admission suggest it is aware of the problems the policy entails and of the difficulties of dismissing them. Assassinations have been part of Israel’s security policy for many years, and Israel is currently the only democratic country that regards such measures as legitimate. The Palestinian violations of international law, however, cannot be used to grant legal and/or moral legitimation to these violations when perpetrated by others.

• If Not Combatants, Certainly Not Civilians138
  Steven R. David

  Stein and I see targeted killing in fundamentally different ways. Stein sees the Palestinian terrorists as civilian noncombatants who are not engaged in war or even armed conflict with Israel. As such, there is no legal or moral right to target them. I see targeted killing as an appropriate response to an intolerable threat. Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself against armed Palestinians who seek to kill as many innocent Israeli civilians as possible. So long as the Palestinian Authority is incapable or unwilling to halt terrorist attacks, most interpretations of international law, Israeli law, and just war tradition support Israel’s efforts to stop these murderous attacks before they can be carried out.

Review Essays

• Redefining Sovereignty and Intervention
  Joelle Tanguy
  The Responsibility to Protect, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

• Fairness, Responsibility, and Climate Change
  Paul G. Harris
  Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming, Tom Athanasiou and Paul Baer
  American Heat: Ethical Problems with the United States’ Response to Global Warming, Donald A. Brown
  Ethics, Equity and International Negotiations on Climate Change, Luiz Pinguelli-Rosa and Mohan Munasinghe, eds.

• Preserving the Imbalance of Power
  David C. Hendrickson
  "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America," White House

Recent Books on Ethics and International Affairs

• Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World, Akira Iriye
  Reviewed by John Gerard Ruggie

• Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate, Naomi Klein
  Making Sweatshops: The Globalization of the U.S. Apparel Industry, Ellen Israel Rosen
  Reviewed by Rebecca DeWinter

• A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, David Rieff
  Reviewed by T. K. Vogel

• The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust, Lawrence P. Douglas
  Reviewed by Rebecca Elizabeth Wittmann

• State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples, Heather Rae
  Reviewed by Norman M. Naimark

• Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide, Alexander Laban Hinton, ed., foreword by Kenneth Roth
  Reviewed by A. Dirk Moses

• Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique, Makau Mutua
  Reviewed by Bonny Ibhawoh

• Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention, Neta C. Crawford
  Reviewed by Daniel Philpott

• First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power, Warren Zimmermann
  Reviewed by R. A. Hamilton

• Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations, Daniel Philpott
  Reviewed by Mark F. N. Franke

• Republic.com, Cass R. Sunstein
  The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World, Lawrence Lessig
  Reviewed by Ian Hosein

• Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, Alain Badiou
  Reviewed by Julian Bourg