The Ashgate Research Companion to Ethics and International Relations

the ashga te research comp ethics and interna tional

anion to rela tions

T he Ashgate Research Companions are designed to o.er scholars and graduate students a comprehensive and authoritative state-of-the-art review of current research in a particular area. The companions’ editors bring together a team of respected and experienced experts to write chapters on the key issues in their speciality, providing a comprehensive reference to the field. Other Research Companions available in Politics and International Relations: The Ashgate Research Companion to Federalism Edited by Ann Ward and Lee Ward ISBN 978-0-7546-7131-2 The Ashgate Research Companion to Political Leadership Edited by Joseph Masciulli, Mikhail A. Molchanov and W. Andy Knight ISBN 978-0-7546-7182-4 The Ashgate Research Companion to the Politics of Democratization in Europe Concepts and Histories Edited by Kari Palonen, Tuija Pulkkinen and José María Rosales ISBN 978-0-7546-7250-0

The Ashgate Research Companion to Ethics and International Relations

Edited by Patrick Hayd en University of St Andrews, UK

© Patrick Hayden 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Patrick Hayden has asserted his right under the Copyright, D esigns and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editor of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Wey Court East Union Road Farnham Surrey GU9 7PT England

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www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data The Ashgate research companion to ethics and international relations. 1. International relations--Moral and ethical aspects. I. Research companion to ethics and international relations II. Hayden, Patrick, 1965172.4-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hayden, Patrick, 1965The Ashgate research companion to ethics and international relations / by Patrick Hayden. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-7101-5 1. International relations--Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title.



JZ1306.H39 2009 172’.4--dc22

2009005392

ISBN 978 0 7546 7101 5 (hbk) ISBN 978 0 7546 9164 8 (ebk.V)

Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.

C ontents Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements

ix xi



1

Introduction Patrick Hayden

PART I  ETHICAL TRADITIONS AND NORMATIVE PERSPECTIVES 1

The Origins of Realism Revisited Gabriella Slomp

13

2

Liberalism Andrew Williams

27

3

Cosmopolitanism Past and Present Patrick Hayden

43

4

Critical Theory, Marxism and International Ethics Steven C. Roach

63

5

Feminist Ethics in World Politics Fiona Robinson

79

6

Poststructuralism Maja Zehfuss

97

PART II  THE ETHICS OF WAR AND PEACE 7

Just War Theory and the Ethics of War and Peace Brian Orend

115

8

Humanitarian Intervention Anthony F. Lang, Jr

133

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns 9

From State Security to Human Security? Ma.hew S. W einert

151

10

Ethics and Weapons of Mass D estruction Steven P. Lee

167

11

Pacifism and International Relations Iain Atack

183

PART III  THE ETHICS AND POLITICS OF HUMAN RIGHTS 12

Human Rights Universalism Anthony J. Langlois

201

13

Genocide: Ethical and Normative Perspectives Adam Jones

215

14

Gender and Human Rights Serena Parekh

233

15

Children’s Human Rights and the Politics of Childhood Alison M.S. Watson

247

16

Human Rights and D emocracy Paul Voice

261

17

Transitional Justice: From the Local to the International Elizabeth Stanley

275

PART IV  DIMENSIONS OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE 18

Poverty, Inequality and Global D istributive Justice Luis Cabrera

19

Political Exclusion of Refugees in the Ethics of International Relations Mark F.N. Franke

309

20

Human Rights, Human Needs, Human D evelopment, Human Security Des Gasper

329

vi

293

Co nt ent s 21

Environmental Justice: National and International D imensions Ruchi Anand

357

22

Multinational Corporations and Global Responsibilities Morton Winston

375

23

Nationalism, Self-D etermination and Secession Omar Dahbour

393

PART V  THE ETHICS OF A GLOBAL SOCIETY 24

The Ethics of Global Governance and Global Governance of Ethics James Brassett

25

Understanding and Analysing Social Movements and Alternative Globalization Martin Weber

427

26

D ialogue and International Ethics: Religion, Cultural D iversity and Universalism Richard Shapcott

443

27

The Transformation of Political Community and Conceptions of Global Citizenship William Smith

461

Index

409

479

vii

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Notes on Contributors Ruchi Anand is Associate Professor at the American Graduate School of International Relations and D iplomacy, Paris, France. Iain Atack is Lecturer and Coordinator of the M.Phil. programme in International Peace Studies at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College D ublin, Ireland. James Brasse. is RCUK Research Fellow and Assistant Professor in the D epartment of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. Luis Cabrera is Lecturer and D irector of Graduate School in the D epartment of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK. Omar Dahbour is Professor in the D epartment of Philosophy, Hunter College of the City University of New York, US. Mark F.N. Franke is Associate Professor in the Centre for Global Studies at Huron University College and core graduate faculty in The Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Des Gasper is Associate Professor at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands. Patrick Hayden is Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, UK. Adam Jones is Associate Professor in the D epartment of Political Science at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, Canada. Anthony F. Lang, Jr is Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, UK. Anthony J. Langlois is Senior Lecturer in the School of Political and International Studies at Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide.

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Steven P. Lee is Professor in the D epartment of Philosophy at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New York, US. Brian Orend is Professor in the D epartment of Philosophy and D irector of International Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Serena Parekh is Assistant Professor in the D epartment of Philosophy and the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut, US. Steven C. Roach is Assistant Professor in the D epartment of Government and International Affairs at the University of South Florida, US. Fiona Robinson is Associate Professor and Supervisor of Graduate Studies in the D epartment of Political Science at Carleton University, Canada. Richard Shapcott is Senior Lecturer in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. Gabriella Slomp is Senior Lecturer in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, UK. William Smith is Lecturer in the Politics Programme at the University of D undee, UK. Elizabeth Stanley is Senior Lecturer in the School of Social and Cultural Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Paul Voice is Professor in Philosophy at Bennington College, Vermont, US. Alison M.S. Watson is Professor in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, UK. Martin Weber is Lecturer in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. Matthew S. Weinert is Assistant Professor in the D epartment of Political Science and International Relations at the University of D elaware, US. Andrew Williams is Professor in the School of International Relations at the University of St Andrews, UK. Morton Winston is Professor in the D epartment of Philosophy and Religion at The College of New Jersey, US. Maja Zehfuss is Professor in the Politics Programme at the University of Manchester, UK. 

Acknowledgements I am grateful to many people for their help with the book and for their encouragement. I would first like to thank my editor, Kirstin Howgate, for convincing me to accept the challenge of doing the book. I am grateful as well to Margaret Younger and the staff at Ashgate for their technical advice and generous support at many stages of this endeavour. I would like to thank particularly the authors of the various chapters, both for the very high quality of their hard and conscientious work and for their enthusiasm in fostering a heightened awareness of ethics and international affairs. As always, I owe my family a huge debt of gratitude for their unflagging support and understanding. Finally, I would like to extend a special thanks to Katherine Meacham for many hours spent in the preparation of the manuscript.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Introduction Patrick Hayden

This book focuses on normative issues of global importance, by examining historical, political and legal debates about the nature of international relations and which key theoretical paradigms are best suited to deal with the central ethical dilemmas facing international politics and world affairs. There is little doubt that the theory and practice of international affairs is tied in interesting and important ways to normative questions. Indeed, there is reason to suspect that world politics is, at bottom, a fundamentally normative enterprise. But this proposition runs counter to much of what passes for received wisdom in the discipline of international relations (IR). As Mervyn Frost (1996, 1) has pointedly explained, ‘although normative questions regularly arise in the dayto-day practice of international politics the discipline of international relations has not accorded ethical theory a central place within it’. D espite this longstanding reluctance or, indeed, resistance towards normative theorizing on the part of mainstream IR, there can be no doubt that international ethics has become firmly established as a field of study straddling a number of disciplinary boundaries. The contemporary field of international ethics is preceded of course by a long history of moral and political thought, which explores the many ethical and philosophical issues arising from the attempt to sort out how people should live their lives in a reflective and responsible way. Central to this ongoing argument is recognition of our social embeddedness, the fact that we are inescapably related to others and therefore that our moral beliefs and political decisions impact upon the lives and decisions of others. These basic features remain an essential part of the recent literature on ethics and international relations. The expression ‘international ethics’ did not come into general use until relatively late in the twentieth century, however, when it became clear that the sterile standoff of the first ‘great debate’ in IR – the intellectual struggle between so-called realists and idealists in the 1920s and 1930s over the nature of international politics and thus over the role of ethical principles therein – was not sufficient to meet the normative challenges confronting the world after the Second World War. Strictly speaking, it was also not possible to 

For illuminating critical studies of the ‘myth’ or conventional historiography of the first of the four ‘great debates’ which have thus far defined the self-image of IR, see Ashworth (2002), Schmidt (1998), Smith (1995) and Wilson (1998).

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns refer in a formal sense to a subject called ‘ethics and international relations’ prior to the modern formation of an international system composed of sovereign states. Clearly the advent of the international system had led to more specialized and novel reflection upon the particular moral considerations unique to a world organized around nation-states. Nonetheless, we can find in the history of moral and political theory many important examples of normative thinking about the types of issues that permeate contemporary international affairs. In other words, thinking about the ethics of politics – and the politics of ethics – has been a characteristic feature of the negotiation of political life in pre-national as well as international contexts, and will continue to be so in the possibly post-national era that some glimpse on our own historical horizon. Historically, the pervasiveness of ‘the moral problem in international relations’ (Hoffmann 1981, 10) has been apparent at least since the time of Thucydides, in the fifth century BCE. The conflict between Athens and Sparta depicted by Thucydides in the History of the Peloponnesian War presents a stark example of the dilemmas surrounding the role and demands of morality in international affairs, broadly construed. The Melian D ialogue, in particular, focuses on the central issue of whether justice or self-interest ought to guide relations between different political communities. Complicated by questions of empire, power, scarcity, freedom and honour, the Athenians justify their conquest of Melos and the slaughter and enslavement of its inhabitants on the grounds of necessity, stating that ‘the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept’ (Thucydides 1972, 402). Interestingly, the Athenian justification does not eschew morality in toto but defines it according to a natural relativism; the ‘standard of justice’, they claim, ‘depends upon the equality of power to compel’ (ibid.). In Aristotelian terms, the Melians advocated formal justice in international affairs, while the Athenians insisted upon proportional justice: different political communities are owed reasonably unequal treatment on the basis of their relative ‘power to compel’. In these terms it is only fair or right for the stronger to rule the weaker, and for the weaker to submit to the stronger. Thucydides’ work thus poses one of the most fundamental questions of international ethics: should ‘strangers’ be treated according to the same ethical principles or standards that we apply to members of our own community? The position adopted by the Athenian delegation to Melos typifies a form of agent-relative partiality in the sense of insisting on a narrow scope of moral concern. On this view, it is not only permissible but even mandatory to favour one’s own community when it comes to making decisions about whom to aid and whom to harm (see Hurka 1997; McMahan 1997). Ethical partiality resonates with ‘commonsense’ morality, of course, inasmuch as many people recognize the requirements we owe to those with whom we have personal relationships or special ties as normatively significant. Whether it be the relation of parent to child, spouse to spouse, friend to friend, or fellow citizen to fellow citizen, it is widely thought that one normally owes more by way of moral concern towards ‘one’s own’, but less to mere acquaintances and least of all to strangers (Cottingham 1986).



Int r o duc t io n Partiality in moral decision-making is a familiar though often controversial dimension of international ethics – particularly as consideration of which persons fall ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ the scope of moral concern came to be defined increasingly in terms of the territorially delimited boundaries of the nation-state. One prominent attempt to overcome the parochialism implied by moral partiality can be found in the cosmopolitan tradition. The cosmopolitanism endorsed by the Stoic philosophers of classical Greece and Rome, for instance, embodies a wide scope of moral concern because it maintains that this scope should be universal, extending to all human beings. For the Stoics, the common human capacities for reasoning provide the grounds for fellowship in a world community; if all humans as rational beings are equal, then all humans together form a single community. It is both desirable and possible for individuals to consider themselves citizens of their local communities as well as citizens of the world (Hayden 2005, 12–14). As Martha Nussbaum explains, classical cosmopolitanism sought to avoid treating moral partiality and impartiality as mutually exclusive alternatives by conceiving of our affiliations and moral obligations as a series of concentric circles that relate together those both near and far: The first one encircles the self, the next takes in the immediate family, then follows the extended family, then, in order, neighbors or local groups, fellow city-dwellers, and fellow countrymen – and we can easily add to this list groupings based on ethnic, linguistic, historical, professional, gender, or sexual identities. Outside all these circles is the largest one, humanity as a whole. Our task as citizens of the world will be to ‘draw the circles somehow toward the center’ … making all human beings more like our fellow city dwellers, and so on (1996, 9). Though classical cosmopolitanism recognizes that anyone has claims to basic moral concern, regardless of the relationship in which he or she stands to the addressee, it also admits that these claims rest alongside those of persons to whom an agent stands in a special relationship (family, close friends, fellow members of a community). Nevertheless, critics have questioned the natural law foundation underpinning the philosophy of Stoicism and its modernist (or Kantian) variations (Hegel 1991); raised doubts about the attractiveness, practicality or efficacy of obligations towards distant others (Miller 1995; Walzer 1994), and wondered whether cosmopolitanism’s moral universalism is simply too demanding to be considered reasonable (Scheffler 2001). Further, as Thucydides had already grasped, within an anarchical society the reality of unequal power and the attendant preoccupation with self-interest greatly complicates the normative picture. Carrying out our responsibilities to other human beings – however far one extends the moral community – in a justifiable way clearly is no easy task. A further step in addressing these issues more systematically, and in direct response to the emergence in Europe of the Westphalian order of sovereign territorial states, was taken by Immanuel Kant. Kant’s conception of international ethics is grounded on the categorical imperative, the various formulations of 

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns which express the universalizability of the principle that all human beings possess intrinsic worth or dignity. This principle, Kant argues, is valid for all persons anywhere, and provides a basis for justifying the universal obligation to respect the dignity of others via the institutional mediation of a system of individual rights (1996). Kant’s argument goes even further in that he regards the republican form of government as providing for the ‘rightful condition’ of justice. Morality or right, in other words, demands that states adopt a system of public law that provides one of the necessary conditions for the realization of individual rights. Kant (1991) sets out the architecture of international justice in terms of three overlapping components of public law: municipal or civil law (ius civitatis), international law or the law of nations (ius gentium), and cosmopolitan law (ius cosmopoliticum). Cosmopolitan law is intended to guarantee the right of ‘hospitality’, a ‘universal right of humanity’ to all individuals. Kant believed that developing an ethical international order on the principle of human dignity would lead us to the point ‘where a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere’ (ibid., 107–8). The power of Kant’s vision has reached the point where almost everyone now recognizes human rights – or at least speaks the language of human rights – and the notion of universal human rights has become integral to, yet contested within, the theoretical and empirical development of international ethics. Whatever objections may be raised to Kantianism in general and rights theory in particular – many of these are aired in the following chapters – another significant dimension of Kant’s formulation of international rights points towards the central question of war and whether there are some relevant principles of normative ethics attached either to the justification or to the condemnation of war. For example, Kant’s conception of a confederation of republican states that would make lasting peace possible not only challenges the realist belief in the enduring conditions of anarchy and insecurity, it also draws attention to the way that the behaviour of states at the international level is strongly influenced by properties of their domestic political structure (or ‘regime type’). Kant therefore favoured a republican constitution because it both best protects the rights of individuals and provides a mechanism for keeping peace between states that are similarly structured. Kant puts it thus: The republican constitution … offers a prospect of attaining the desired result, i.e. perpetual peace, and the reason for this is as follows. – If, as is inevitably the case under this constitution, the consent of the citizens is required to decide whether or not war is to be declared, it is very natural that they will 

Kenneth Waltz (1959) later referred to this type of focus on how domestic factors influence or cause international outcomes in terms of the ‘second image’ of international relations theory; the ‘first image’ focuses on causal factors at the individual or psychological level, such as the urge to dominate, while the ‘third image’ focuses on factors at the level of the international system, such as the pressures of anarchy. Kant’s emphasis on the three levels of public law, it might be argued, demonstrates a nuanced grasp of how the three levels of individual, state and international system are inextricably entwined and mutually constitutive; see Harrison (2002). 

Int r o duc t io n have great hesitation in embarking on so dangerous an enterprise. For this would mean calling down on themselves all the miseries of war (ibid., 100). Kant suggests that as states with a republican form of government become more numerous, international conflict will decrease. In linking the belligerent or pacific behaviour of states to their specific political institutions, decision-making procedures and culture (as reflected, for instance, in a commitment to tolerance, conflict resolution and public debate), rather than to the exigencies of an anarchical international system, Kant laid the intellectual foundation for the democratic peace thesis. The democratic peace thesis – as developed by scholars such as Bruce Russett (1993) and Michael D oyle (1983) – refers to two propositions. One is that ‘mature’ or stable democracies can be expected to keep the peace between themselves, but not necessarily with other non-democratic states, and the other is that democracies are more likely than other states to be more pacific in their relations overall, including with non-democracies. While there is substantial debate about the strength of the empirical evidence used to support the thesis, it also has been said that it ‘comes as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations’ (Levy 1988, 662). D ebates about the democratic peace proposition roughly coincided with both a renewed interest in the just war tradition (or with ethics and warfare more broadly) and a flourishing of normative theorizing about international affairs. While much of the international relations scholarship during the mid-twentieth century eschewed overt normative theorizing due to the charge that such approaches were naively idealist or ‘utopian’ – an accusation levelled by E.H. Carr (1981) against interwar liberalism in 1939 – much of political theory and philosophy (of the Anglo-American variety at least) during this same period was preoccupied with behaviouralism and positivist epistemology and methodology (Schmidt 2002, 118–19; Gunnell 1993). When political theory was normatively oriented, it tended to focus on public affairs at the domestic rather than international level. John Rawls’s hugely influential A Theory of Justice (1971), which develops an account of social justice on the basis of the ‘self-contained’ community, is a case in point. Rawls sought to address the question of justice between states (and ‘peoples’) in his later work, The Law of Peoples (1999), which has since been the subject of vigorous debate. Yet the intense superpower rivalry of the Cold War, with its numerous proxy wars and persistent threat of ‘mutually assured destruction’, as well as the disastrous wars raging in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, brought attention back to the just war tradition initiated by Augustine and Aquinas and their attempts to establish a legitimate basis for the conduct of war. Indeed, the just war tradition developed sophisticated distinctions between ius ad bellum (just resort to war), ius in bello (just conduct of war), and even ius post bellum (just termination of war) (Orend 2002; Walzer 2004). Michael Walzer’s (1992) work in particular revived just war thinking and demonstrated its continued relevance to the moral issues raised by the problem of war. 

For critiques of the democratic peace theory, see Layne (1994), Moaz (1998) and Rosato (2003). 

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns In addition, the changing contours of the international political landscape and rapidly evolving technological developments proved conducive to a rapid rise in ‘new normative approaches’ to international relations and world politics (see Brown 1992): decolonization led to the transformation of colonial territories into sovereign, independent states; human rights and norms proscribing genocide became institutionalized within the UN system and assorted international regimes; nuclear, chemical and biological weapons proliferated alongside the emergence of ‘high-tech’ warfare; states became increasingly interdependent economically and processes of globalization accelerated; social movements, interest groups and NGOs dramatically multiplied across more porous state borders; humanitarian crises or emergencies arising from drought, famine, armed conflict and forced migration led to calls for (and against) military intervention in distant lands; the gap between rich and poor both within and between states widened inexorably; democratic transitions from repressive regimes spread; and global environmental problems such as climate change, air and water pollution, and food and resource scarcity continued to mount. In the wake of such developments, normative approaches to world affairs have become not only increasingly popular, but seemingly imperative. Although normative theorizing about international relations was relatively neglected in the first half of the twentieth century, it is clear that this is no longer the case today (see Smith 1992). The surge of interest in ethics and international relations that began in the late 1960s gradually gathered pace over the following four decades; the turning point signalling the field’s ‘arrival’ can perhaps be marked by the appearance of a new specialist journal, Ethics & International Affairs, in 1987. Since then the expression ‘ethics and international affairs’ has come into general use. Several features of this recent trend are especially noteworthy. First, while contemporary issues of the day fuelled the growth of normative theorizing, it also has been driven by a renewed attention to the classics of moral, social and political thought. This interest reflects awareness that the history and resources of international theory extend well past the twentieth century, and recognition that issues central to the concerns of recent decades often had been examined with sophistication and depth by early modern and pre-modern thinkers (see Boucher 1997; Jahn 2006). A second feature of contemporary normative theorizing about international relations is the wide array of topics it addresses. While much of the initial literature appearing in the 1960s and 1970s was dominated by discussions of issues traditionally central to the ethics of warfare, scholars soon turned their attention to a much more expansive set of concerns, such as global distributive justice (for instance Beitz 1999; Pogge 2002), immigration and refugees (for instance Cole 2000; Nyers 2006), the gendered aspects of IR (for instance Enloe 1990; Robinson 1999), and environmentalism (for instance Attfield 1999; Eckersley 2004). A third notable characteristic of recent international ethics is its openness toward postpositivist perspectives and a concomitant willingness to challenge the traditional dominance of liberalism and realism (whether classical or ‘neo’). Critical theory, feminist theory, hermeneutics, postcolonial theory and poststructuralism have been insufficiently appreciated in international theory, yet each brings important 

Int r o duc t io n challenges to the orthodox examination of contemporary world events – such as deconstructing the binary oppositions that have conventionally framed ethical questions and issues (Edkins 1999). All of these features indicate a favourable climate for greater pluralism within ethical and political theory of international relations. Given these developments, the aim of this Companion is to provide an up-todate survey of the state of the art in ethics and international relations. It makes no attempt to cover every possible issue in the field, as both current events and theoretical innovations thwart such aspirations. Instead, it is a selective though reasonably comprehensive representation of some of the most important debates, theories and issues shaping the past, present and future of normative international theory. With this in mind, the chapters are both surveys that inform the reader of relevant figures and literature and assess salient developments, and original essays that reflect the distinctive viewpoint and insight of their authors. They are intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for those with some knowledge of the field looking for an authoritative and stimulating reference work on international ethics today. As the preceding discussion indicates, the approaches and interests of those working in the field of ethics and international affairs have become quite diverse. A glance at the table of contents hopefully reveals that this diversity is well represented in the present volume. The Ashgate Research Companion to Ethics and International Relations is divided into five parts. Part I covers the most influential theoretical approaches discussed in the field, whether defined as ‘traditions’, ‘paradigms’ or ‘schools of thought’. As Martin Wight (1991, 259–60) observed, it is important to resist treating theoretical traditions as ‘railroad tracks running parallel into infinity’; rather, they are like ‘streams with eddies and cross-currents’ that ‘influence and cross-fertilize one another’. Indeed, normative theorizing at an international level reflects a wide range of competing yet cross-cutting approaches, including political realism and liberalism – perhaps the two most dominant theories of international affairs in the twentieth century – as well as Marxism and, more recently, critical theory, feminist theories and poststructuralism. The major living religious traditions also have contributed to discussion about normative international issues. Part II consists of essays examining various dimensions of and approaches to questions of war and peace. Aggression and peaceful coexistence have been of long-standing interest to political theorists, ethicists and international relations scholars, although perceptions about the causes and consequences of both vary considerably amongst realist, pacifist and just war perspectives. Even though theoretical reflection on war and peace is not new, current conditions have led to renewed consideration of foreign policy, the rules of war, the prospect of lasting peace and the complex association between humanitarianism and militarism. Part III addresses a set of issues concerning human rights, while Part IV turns to issues of international justice. In many respects the chapters in Parts III and IV exhibit a tendency not only to extend and clarify normative thinking but also to ‘apply’ ethical theories to specific issues within contemporary world affairs. This is not to suggest any kind of formulaic application of pre-set values, beliefs or 

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns principles; rather it is to stress that the activity of ‘doing’ international ethics often becomes most explicit when it engages with those issues that, at any given time, appear most prominent in public discourse. Concerns relevant to human rights, cultural identity, democratization, poverty, development and the environment, to name just a few, inform many national and international public debates today. Part V explores some relatively new directions for ethics and international affairs arising from the advent of globalization and the unique ethical challenges it brings forth. Here many of the assumptions of the theoretical approaches surveyed in Part I are re-evaluated in light of our global age, and the prospects for new forms of political action, dialogue, community and citizenship are addressed. While the problems and opportunities raised by globalization are neither entirely unique nor subject to general consensus, they pose significant questions for all those interested in thoughtful reflection on ethics and international relations. In the end, it is hoped that readers of this volume will encounter not only exposition and criticism of prominent issues and approaches, but also distinctive viewpoints on how we are to understand the implications of particular normative theories and subjects under discussion by some of the most distinguished and interesting scholars in the field. Whatever else its publication may accomplish, this volume will have achieved its main purpose if it contributes to the continued flowering of international ethics.

References Ashworth, L.M. (2002), ‘D id the Realist–Idealist Great D ebate Really Happen? A Revisionist History of International Relations’, International Relations 16:1, 33– 51. Attfield, R. (1999), The Ethics of the Global Environment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Beitz, C. (1999), Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Boucher, D . (1997), ‘Political Theory, International Theory, and the Political Theory of International Relations’, in Vincent, A. (ed.), Political Theory: Tradition and Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Brown, C. (1992), International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (New York: Columbia University Press). Carr, E.H. (1981), The Twenty Years’ Crisis: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Cole, P. (2000), Philosophies of Exclusion: Liberal Political Theory and Immigration (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Cottingham, J. (1986), ‘Partiality, Favouritism and Morality’, Philosophical Quarterly 36:144, 357–73. D oyle, M. (1983), ‘Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 12:3/4, 205–35, 323–53. 

Int r o duc t io n Eckersley, R. (2004), The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Edkins, J. (1999), Poststructuralism and International Relations: Bringing the Political Back In (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner). Enloe, C. (1990), Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press). Frost, M. (1996), Ethics in International Relations: A Constitutive Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gunnell, J.G. (1993), The Descent of Political Theory: A Genealogy of an American Vocation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Harrison, E. (2002), ‘Waltz, Kant and Systemic Approaches to International Relations’, Review of International Studies 28:1, 143–62. Hayden, P. (2005), Cosmopolitan Global Politics (Aldershot: Ashgate). Hegel, G.W.F. (1991), Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Hoffmann, S. (1981), Duties Beyond Borders: On the Limits and Possibilities of Ethical International Politics (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press). Hurka, T. (1997), ‘The Justification of National Partiality’, in McKim and McMahan (eds). Jahn, B. (ed.) (2006), Classical Theory in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kant, I. (1991), ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’, in Reiss, H. (ed.), Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). — (1996), The Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Layne, C. (1994), ‘Kant or Cant: The Myth of the D emocratic Peace’, International Security 19:2, 5–49. Levy, J.S. (1988), ‘D omestic Politics and War’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18:3, 653–73. McKim, R., and McMahan, J. (eds) (1997), The Morality of Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press). McMahan, J. (1997), ‘The Limits of National Partiality’, in McKim and McMahan (eds). Miller, D . (1995), On Nationality (New York: Oxford University Press). Moaz, Z. (1998), ‘Realist and Cultural Critiques of the D emocratic Peace: A Theoretical and Empirical Re-Assessment’, International Interactions 24:1, 3–89. Nussbaum, M. (1996), ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’, in Cohen, J. (ed.), For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism (Boston, MA: Beacon Press). Nyers, P. (2006), Rethinking Refugees: Beyond States of Emergency (New York and London: Routledge). Orend, B. (2002), ‘Justice after War’, Ethics & International Affairs 16:1, 43–56. Pogge, T. (2002), World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press). Rawls, J. (1971), A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). — (1999), The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Robinson, F. (1999), Globalizing Care: Ethics, Feminist Theory and International Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). 

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Rosato, S. (2003), ‘The Flawed Logic of D emocratic Peace Theory’, American Political Science Review 97:4, 585–602. Russett, B. (1993), Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Scheffler, S. (2001), Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Schmidt, B.C. (1998), The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). — (2002), ‘Together Again: Reuniting Political Theory and International Relations Theory’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 4:1, 115–40. Smith, S. (1992), ‘The Forty Years’ D etour: The Resurgence of Normative Theory in International Relations’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 21:3, 489– 506. — (1995), ‘The Self-Images of a D iscipline: A Genealogy of International Relations Theory’, in Booth, K., and Smith, S. (eds), International Relations Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press). Thucydides (1972), History of the Peloponnesian War (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Waltz, K. (1959), Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press). Walzer, M. (1992), Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 2nd edn (New York: HarperCollins). — (1994), Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre D ame, IN: University of Notre D ame Press). — (2004), Arguing About War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Wight, M. (1991), International Theory: The Three Traditions (London: Leicester University Press). Wilson, P. (1998), ‘The Myth of the “First Great D ebate”’, Review of International Studies 24:5, 1–15.

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PART I ETHICAL TRADITIONS AND NORMATIVE PERSPECTIVES

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1 The Origins of Realism Revisited Gabriella Slomp

A tomato looks innocent, but it is not. It tastes like a vegetable, it is excellent in soups, its flavour is enhanced by olive oil and salt, and yet the tomato is – the experts tell us – a fruit, a cousin of the apple. Political realism looks innocent too. One wonders whether it is a fruit or a vegetable. Political theorists, like botanists, need to classify their crops. And like botanists, they look to genetics and evolution to provide answers to their questions of classification. In textbooks and the works of specialists alike, we are presented with myriad definitions of realism: it is an ‘orientation’, a ‘tradition’, a ‘paradigm’, a ‘philosophical disposition’, an ‘attitude of mind’, a ‘framework’, an ‘approach’. For example, we read: ‘Realism is an approach to international relations that has emerged gradually through the work of a series of analysts who have situated themselves within, and thus delimited, a distinctive but still diverse style or tradition of analysis’ (D onnelly 2000, 6). Although there is no consensus on how exactly one ought to classify political realism, there is nevertheless widespread agreement on two points: political realism has a certain origin and it incorporates specific key ideas. Unlike the tomato, which hails from Latin America, political realism is of European origin: we find it in the works of Thucydides, Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes. Moreover, the body of ideas for which realism stands has been described thus: Almost everyone in the field is able to identify the central tenets that are associated with realism, which typically include the following claims: that the sovereign state is the most important actor in international politics; that state behaviour can be explained rationally; that states are unitary actors; that there is a sharp distinction between domestic and international politics; that states pursue power in an anarchical self-help setting; and that the issues of war and peace are paramount (Schmidt 2002, 9). In this chapter, we shall focus on the origins of realism with the overall aim of shedding light on its essence. This will be carried out in three steps. Firstly, we shall investigate what realists make of the works by Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes,

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns and we shall support the camp of interpreters who emphasize the selective nature of the realists’ reading of classical texts. Secondly, we shall contend that much of what realists overlook in the discourses of Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes is relevant and arguably even central to arriving at a correct understanding of the theories of these classical writers. It will be suggested that realists have no genuine historical or analytical interest in the ‘real’ Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes. Thirdly, we shall reflect on the trend for ideologies in the twentieth century to appropriate the Machiavellian or Hobbesian ‘brand’ – and hence make claim to an illustrious progenitor – and yet show scarce interest in the complex and challenging theories of these writers. We shall conclude that from the point of view of a political theorist, realism is very much like a tomato: a fruit that pretends to be a vegetable, a colourful ideology that presents itself as a neutral approach or a scientific paradigm.

I Thucydides is generally considered to be the earliest and most notable expression of political realism in Western political thought. From Martin Wight to R.G. Gilpin, the History of the Peloponnesian War is regarded as one of the most powerful accounts of the systematic use of force to achieve political ends: ‘One of the supreme books on power politics is the history by Thucydides of the great war between Athens and Sparta’ (Wight 2004, 24). Michael D oyle voices the opinion of many when he claims that ‘Thucydides belongs to the Realists. They belong to him’ (1997, 91). Among the passages of the History that have particularly attracted the attention of realists, the Melian D ialogue stands out. The Melians were a colony from Sparta that refused to follow the other islanders in joining the Athenian enterprise; rather, they had remained neutral at first and had then become open enemies of Athens. D uring the speech to the Melian governing body, the Athenian representatives advocated the time-honoured view that justice depends on equality of power and that among parties that are unequal, the strong does what he can and the weak endures what he must. Another dialogue in the History that arguably lends itself to a realist interpretation is the oration to the Corinthians by the Athenian ambassadors in the early stages of the Peloponnesian war. The Athenians are reported by Thucydides to have justified their expansionist policy thus: ‘We were forced to advance our dominion to what it is, out of the nature of the thing itself; as chiefly for fear, next for honour, and lastly for profit’ (Hobbes 1843, 81). The Athenian ambassadors imputed Athens’ behaviour to the very essence of human nature, thereby suggesting that there is no need to excuse it: ‘So that, though



All references are to The History of the Grecian War Written by Thucydides, translated by Thomas Hobbes, Volumes VIII and IX of the English Works of Thomas Hobbes, edited by Sir William Molesworth, London, 1843. 14

Th e Or igins o f Real ism Revisit ed overcome by three the greatest things, honour, fear and profit … we have therein done nothing to be wondered at besides the manner of men’ (ibid., 82). These three motives for action – fear, prestige and profit – are central to Thucydides’ narration. Fear in particular plays a crucial role in the History: fear is motivated by uncertainty, results in diffidence, brings about anticipation and affects human deliberation. In the few passages where Thucydides reveals his own point of view, he suggests that the war arose chiefly because of the fear by the Lacedaemonians of Athens’ increasing power and desire to rule: ‘The causes why they broke the same [league], and their quarrels, I have therefore set down first … the truest quarrel. Though least in speech, I conceive to be the growth of the Athenian power; which putting the Lacedaemonians into fear necessitated the war’ (ibid., 27). Throughout the narration it is suggested that the havoc of war destruction is bound to be repeated throughout human history with no possibility of salvation. T he History conveys the impression that one of the reasons for being pessimistic about the future is people’s incredible optimism. D uring the Mytilenean debate, for example, D iodotus puts forward an argument that recurs in the History, namely that people and cities are guided in their actions more by hope for success than by fear of failure; he argues that deterrents such as capital punishment do not work as human beings hope to achieve their objectives with impunity; in his words: ‘encouraged by hope, men hazard themselves … They have it by nature, both men and cities, to commit offences; nor is there any law that can prevent it’ (ibid., 311, emphasis added). To sum up, various features of realism can be found in Thucydides’ work: his analysis of the conflict between expediency and ethics, his pessimistic view of human nature, his interpretation of political motivations and behaviour leading to conflict and war, and his investigation into the notion of self-interest and power all adhere to realism’s central tenets. Michael D oyle defines Thucydides’ position as ‘complex realism’ and recognizes in it the seeds from which different species of realism will grow. Indeed, according to D oyle, the rejection of the ‘unity thesis’ of realism is consistent with the defence of the ‘continuity thesis’ according to which ‘realism does hark back to Thucydides’ (1997, 50). Jack D onnelly, however, is among those interpreters who harbour reservations about the extent of Thucydides’ realism. D onnelly insists rather forcibly that it is not the whole of Thucydides’ History but ‘the Melian D ialogue [that] is an important touchstone in the realist tradition’ (2000, 24). D onnelly stresses that although the Melian D ialogue provides ‘perhaps the best known, and certainly one of the strongest, statements of realist amoralism’ (ibid., 167), the argument for justice introduced by the Melians constitutes an important thread in Thucydides’ narration. D onnelly concludes: ‘Justice is rarely triumphant in Thucydides’ History. It is however regularly present, relevant, and even important’ (ibid., 170). Although we have shown above that realism in the History is not at all confined to the Melian D ialogue, Jack D onnelly’s problems with the realist interpretation of Thucydides’ stand on justice seem reasonable. In the last twenty years, a number of interpreters have emphasized that ‘Thucydides is not for every theorist of international relations an unremitting Realist’ (Boucher 1998, 67) and denounced the privileging of certain hand-picked aspects of the History by realists. Although 15

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns in Thucydides’ narration there are indeed reflections or claims that are consistent with a realist standpoint, there are also important discourses that do not conform to the realist approach and that seriously undermine the ‘continuity thesis’ that grounds realism in Thucydides’ History. One could go even further and argue that although the Athenians emerge as enthusiastic supporters of power politics, the verdict of Thucydides’ History is, in fact, that the realist approach to politics cost the Athenians their empire, their wealth and their domestic stability. This hardly amounts to an endorsement.

II Niccolò Machiavelli is also regarded as having made an important contribution to the development of the realist creed. Machiavelli is the father of ‘fundamental realism’ for Michael D oyle (1997), a voice of ‘empirical realism’ for D avid Boucher (1998), one of the six realist paradigms for Jack D onnelly (2000), and an inspiration for Realpolitik according to Howard Williams (1992). In D oyle’s words: Machiavelli’s realism rests causally and directly – fundamentally – on the individual leader, citizen, or subject and his or her ambitions, fears, and interests. … [Machiavelli] takes what was one element in Thucydides’ view of interstate politics and distils from it a practical guide to the behaviour of new princes and the leaders of expansionist republics (1997, 93–4). The Prince, The Discourses on the First Decade of Livy and The Art of War are regarded as important contributions to the development of political realism. Many themes that one finds in Thucydides are developed by Machiavelli: a negative notion of human nature, the importance of power and self-interest, the conflicting claims of conventional morality and expediency, and the battle of necessity and chance in human affairs. Friedrich Meinecke’s classic work arguably offers one of the most stimulating readings of Machiavelli. For Meinecke, Machiavelli’s ‘whole political way of thought is nothing else but a continual process of thinking about raison d’état’ (1957, 29). Even if the expression itself did not exist, as Meinecke points out, the concept did and Machiavelli made a tremendous contribution to its development. The realist feature of Machiavelli’s thinking is aptly captured by the following quotation from The Prince that summarizes many of his views on politics: But my hope is to write a book that will be useful … and so I thought it sensible to go straight to a discussion of how things are in real life and not waste time with a discussion of an imaginary world. For many authors have constructed imaginary republics and principalities that have never existed in practice and never could; for the gap between how people actually behave and how they ought to behave is so great that anyone who ignores everyday 16

Th e Or igins o f Real ism Revisit ed reality in order to live up to an ideal will soon discover he has taught how to destroy himself, not how to preserve himself. For anyone who wants to act the part of a good man in all circumstances will bring about his own ruin, for those he has to deal with will not all be good. So it is necessary for a ruler, if he wants to hold on to power, to learn how not to be good, and to know when it is and when it is not necessary to use this knowledge (1995, 48). Realist values are not confined to The Prince. In the Discourses we read: This counsel merits the attention of, and ought to be observed by, every citizen who has to give advice to his country. For when the safety of one’s country wholly depends on the decision to be taken, no attention should be paid either to justice or injustice, to kindness or cruelty, or to its being praiseworthy or ignominious. On the contrary, every other consideration being set aside, that alternative should be wholeheartedly adopted which will save the life and preserve the freedom of one’s country (1970, 515). There is a multiplicity of reasons that explains Machiavelli’s classification as an early realist: he was not interested in what people ought to do but in what people actually do, he did not see politics as the pursuit of the good life but as the attempt to achieve and retain power, he had a pessimistic view of human nature, he considered power and security to be fundamental concerns, and he subordinated all other considerations to political success. Indeed, for Machiavelli, the pursuit and protection of political power justifies the use of all means. As Meinecke explains: Enemies learn to use each other’s weapons. Virtù has the task of forcing back fortuna. Fortuna is malicious, so virtù must also be malicious, when there is no other way open. This expresses quite plainly the real spiritual origin of Machiavellism: the infamous doctrine that, in national behaviour, even unclean methods are justified, when it is a question of winning or of keeping the power which is necessary for the State (1957, 36). In The Prince, Machiavelli focuses on historical examples of rulers or statesmen such as Cesare Borgia, Maximilian and Pope Julius II. He emphasizes the differing abilities of these leaders to cope with good and bad luck; he reflects on the ill effects of procrastination in politics, on the need for prudence in careful balance with a willingness to take risks, on the importance of self-confidence and being prepared to be ruthless and disliked when required, on the relevance of appearances, and on the impossibility of a government resting on force alone. In The Prince, Machiavelli comes to the conclusion that the rarest of qualities – but also the one that is most crucial to making a leader successful – is the ability to adapt in the face of changing historical circumstances. In the Discourses, Machiavelli again stresses the paramount importance of being flexible when confronted with variable and unfamiliar events, problems and conditions: the mixed constitution of Rome meant to ensure this degree of 17

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns adaptability to changing sociopolitical landscapes. This flexibility is explained and discussed throughout Machiavelli’s writings by means of three related concepts: virtù, fortuna and necessità. As Meinecke has pointed out: ‘virtù, fortuna and necessità are three words which keep on sounding again and again throughout his writings with a kind of brazen ring’ (ibid., 37). Although many reflections related to these concepts have a realist flavour, some do not. Indeed it is here – at this crucial juncture of his political thought, the complex relationship of virtù, fortuna and necessità – that Machiavelli shows the non-realist aspects of his theory and the reasons why legions of interpreters have associated his name with humanism and even idealism. Meinecke, for example, sees in Machiavelli’s theory of virtù a ‘striking mixture of pessimism and idealism’ (ibid., 33); he points out that over time, ‘the ethical aim of statecraft’, his ‘ancient heathen idealism of the State’ were no longer understood by his readers; all they understood was ‘the ancient heathen realism of his statecraft’ (ibid., 45). In the first half of the twentieth century, we have philosophers such as Benedetto Croce who claimed that Machiavelli was a humanist crucified between the conflicting claims of ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’; in the second half of the century, Quentin Skinner argued forcibly that Machiavelli is an exponent of classical republicanism and the supporter of a specific notion of freedom. Even among interpreters of international political thought there seems to be consensus that Machiavelli ‘was indeed a much more complex thinker than Realist interpretations generally allow’ (Boucher 1998, 91). According to D onnelly, for example, ‘Machiavelli, like Thucydides, insists on the relevance, even centrality, of considerations of justice, decency and the common good’ (2000, 174): ‘Machiavelli simply does not prefer or recommend an amoral politics of power and interest’ (ibid., 177).

III At the high table of the founding fathers of realism, a special place is usually reserved for Thomas Hobbes. Unlike Thucydides who was a general and Machiavelli who was a diplomat, Thomas Hobbes was a tutor and not a man of action. Hobbes’s life was touched only slightly by international affairs. From the biographical notes written by one of his contemporaries, we know that on 5 April 1588 Thomas’s ‘mother fell in labour with him upon the fright of the invasion of the Spaniards’ (Aubrey 1982, 150); indeed Hobbes used to joke about his mother giving birth to twins, himself and fear. He was well aware of European politics because as tutor to the Earl of D evonshire he travelled extensively in Europe; we know from his correspondence that he had sometime to interrupt his journeys because of impending wars. Moreover, since his undergraduate years in Oxford when he took great delight in looking at maps, Hobbes was very curious about the New World; he was interested in international trade and later in life he even had affairs in the Virginia and Summer Island Companies (Malcolm 2002).

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Th e Or igins o f Real ism Revisit ed It was not international politics in any of its facets, however, but domestic politics and the English Civil War that had a tremendous effect on Thomas Hobbes and turned his mind from philosophy, literature and mathematics to politics. His superb translation of Thucydides’s History into English marked the beginning of the period of his life in which politics became the focus of his reflections. Interestingly, Hobbes regarded Thucydides as ‘the most politic historiographer that ever writ’ not for his understanding of international politics but for his insight into the dynamics of political associations, for his indirect critique of democracy, for his account of the stasis of Corcyra and the plague of Athens. Indeed, interpreters have shown striking parallels and even textual concordance between Hobbes’s and Thucydides’ writings (Klosko and Rice 1985; Slomp 1990). Hobbes maintained that domestic peace could be attained independently from what happens at international level. He also believed that by using the right methodology it was possible to explain the phenomenon of civil war and to suggest a recipe ‘for immortal peace’ within a state’s borders. He highlighted a number of characteristics about human beings: they are capable of rationality, they fear violent death at the hand of others, they are equally vulnerable in the sense that the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest, they desire to increase their power and prestige, and they are by nature independent and free. On the ground of these assumptions, Hobbes derived logically his famous account of the state of nature where men who are rational and interested in self-preservation, equal to each other in their ability to harm, and who desire dominion over others, live together without police, without arbiters, without laws that restrict their freedom and without central authority that decides the distribution of the limited resources. He claims that the combined effect of all the assumptions is a war of all against all. D riven by fear of being killed, all individuals attack each other in anticipation; he explains that war does not consist always in actual fighting but in the expectation of fighting. From D avid Gauthier to Gregory Kavka, from Jean Hampton to Russell Hardin, many interpreters have applied game theory to the Hobbesian state of nature and illustrated with prisoners’ dilemmas, coordination games and supergames, how the ‘natural conditions’ of mankind turn into a state of war of all against all. Hans Morgenthau stressed that Hobbes gave the classical analysis of the unlimited desire for power in Chapter XI of Leviathan. Morgenthau quotes the following passage from Hobbes: So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in Death. And the cause of all this, is not that a man hopes for a more intensive delight, that he has already attained to; or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more. And from hence it is, that 

I review all these applications in Slomp and La Manna (1996) and I critique the gametheoretical approach to Hobbes in Slomp (2000). 19

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Kings, whose power is greatest, turn their endeavours to the assuring it at home by Lawes, or abroad by wars: and when that is done, there succeedeth a new desire; in some, of fame for new conquest (1948, 67, n. 16). Hobbes claimed that the only way to escape from this perpetual war was to modify two characteristics of the state of nature: the natural equality and the natural liberty of all individuals. By means of the creation of a formidable artificial entity – the sovereign state – that is superior to all citizens and can restrict their liberty, Hobbes thought he had found the recipe for domestic order. By wielding absolute and unlimited power – power that is grounded on the unconditional obedience of all – the Leviathan can provide each and every one of its citizens with security and protection against internal and external enemies. In De Cive the state of nature is presented to the readers as a thought experiment, but in Leviathan Hobbes claims that the state of nature can occur in actuality under three historical circumstances: in primitive societies, in the heat of civil war, or in international relations. He famously wrote: But though there had never been any time, wherein particular men were in a condition of warre one against another; yet in all times, Kings, and Persons of Soveraigne authority, because of their Independency, are in continual jealousies, and in the state and posture of Gladiators; having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed on one another; that is, their Forts, Garrisons, and Guns upon the Frontiers of their Kingdomes; and continuall Spyes upon their neighbours; which is a posture of War (1991, 90). Hobbes also alerted his readers to differences between the state of nature and international relations: ‘But because they [states] uphold thereby the Industry of their Subjects; there does not follow from it, that misery, which accompanies the Liberty of particular men’ (ibid., 98). The state of nature plays a crucial role in Hobbes’s construction of the state and has been a focal point for the attention of IR scholars (Beitz 1979). Hedley Bull describes ‘the Hobbesian or realist tradition’ thus: The Hobbesian tradition describes international relations as a state of war of all against all, an arena of struggle in which each state is pitted against every other. International relations, on the Hobbesian view, represent pure conflict between states and resemble a game that is wholly distributive or zero-sum: the interests of each state exclude the interests of any other (1995, 23). According to Jack D onnelly, ‘Chapter 13 of Leviathan … presents a fine example of a strong realism that gives roughly equal weight to egoism and to anarchy’ (2000, 13–14). Not all IR specialists, however, are convinced by the association of Hobbes with realism. For example, we read:

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Th e Or igins o f Real ism Revisit ed Hobbes was not concerned with inter-state relations; his observations about them are offshoot, a subordinate part of his explanation of domestic politics and his justification for government. It is somewhat surprising therefore that his few and brief references to IR have been so influential. This is partly due to the vivid and forceful style of presentation, partly because it appears in outline to fit the simple realist model, and partly because of the general paucity of philosophical speculation about IR (Evans and Newnham 1998, 227). Among Hobbesian specialists, one can distinguish between two camps. On the one hand, there are interpreters such as D avid Gauthier, Gregory Kavka and Richard Tuck who have welcomed the study of the international implications of Hobbes’s theory and encouraged the enquiry into the relationship between Hobbes and realism; on the other hand, Howard Warrender and Noel Malcolm have led the camp of those who are worried and irritated by misuses and abuses of Hobbes. Malcolm claims that the portrayal of Hobbes by IR theorists ‘appears to be based, for the most part, on a handful of passages in one or two of his works (ignoring many comments on international affairs elsewhere in his writings); and even those few passages have been misunderstood’ (2002, 435). In 1957, Howard Warrender pointed out that the Hobbesian state of nature cannot be equated to international relations as, unlike natural men, states do not have equal power (1957, 119). This claim was echoed by some IR specialists but resisted by D avid Gauthier on the ground that equal nuclear vulnerability secures the analogy of international relations to the Hobbesian state of nature (1969, 207– 8). To conclude, many associate Hobbes with realism; Hobbes’s main qualifying credentials include his negative notion of human nature, his commitment to security issues, his concept of anarchy, his notion of state sovereignty, his claim that a law without sanctions is no law, and his attempt to separate morality and politics. For others, realism reaps very little of what Hobbes attempted to sow.

IV We have seen above that realists privilege some parts or aspects of Thucydides’, Machiavelli’s and Hobbes’s arguments. In this section I am going to suggest that the realists’ reading of classical texts is not only selective but at times even incorrect. I will offer as an example Hobbes’s notion of the function of state sovereignty. There is a long-standing debate on the conflicting claims of state sovereignty and human rights and whether such a dichotomy can be overcome (Brown 2002a; Lyons and Mastanduno 1995; Jackson 2007). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to address this complex debate; here it suffices to note that Hobbes is often associated with the dichotomy of state sovereignty versus human rights and with the endorsement of the interests of the state. Such an interpretation can be challenged on the ground of textual evidence. 21

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Of course, the notion of human rights was foreign to Hobbes’s way of thinking. Even so, it is easy to show that this seventeenth-century writer did not value state sovereignty per se. On the contrary, like Bodin, Hobbes developed the concept of state sovereignty with a view to protecting a people’s way of life from the interference of external entities such as the Pope, the emperor or foreign princes. For Hobbes the main purpose of the state was to provide people with the conditions for a safe and industrious existence. In Leviathan, Hobbes writes: ‘The End of the institution of Sovereignty [is] the peace of the subjects within themselves, and their defence against a common Enemy’ (1991, 150). Hobbes spells out that the sovereign provides protection in exchange for obedience and that absolute protection requires absolute obedience to the Leviathan. A hasty reading of Hobbes’s theory might suggest that sovereign states are their own judge and jury, that they have an absolute right to wage war, and that they can treat their own citizens as they wish. In fact, Hobbes did not identify sovereign power with arbitrary power. Even if the Leviathan is not accountable to the Hobbesian citizens, he is accountable, Hobbes claims, to God for the treatment of his people. Immanuel Kant interpreted Hobbes’s concept of sovereignty correctly and indeed he endorsed it (Tuck 1999; Slomp 2007a). In an essay entitled On the Common Saying: ‘This May be True in Theory, but it does not Apply in Practice’ Kant (1991) accepts the Hobbesian principle that the function of the sovereign state is to provide protection in exchange for obedience, but he expands the list of rights that the state is supposed to protect. Of course, doubts have been raised about Kant’s view that Hobbesian sovereignty is compatible with liberal principles and international institutions (Morgenthau 1948). To attribute the sovereignty versus rights dichotomy to Hobbes is inappropriate in so far as Hobbes was in favour of state sovereignty for the self-preservation and well-being of people. The dichotomy of sovereignty and rights is a relatively recent invention that was unknown to Hobbes. Kant did not reject Hobbes’s concept of sovereignty but simply expanded the list of rights that the state ought to protect. By ignoring this important, arguably central, aspect of Hobbes’s theory, realists show that their interest in Hobbes is neither historical nor analytical.

V Although the above account is by no means comprehensive, it is hoped that it provides sufficiently persuasive support for the view that the realist reading of Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes is often selective, sometimes incorrect, and always guided by some overall project that has nothing to do with achieving a greater historical understanding of classical texts or with exploring the contributions that past masters can make to current debates. We may recall that in the twentieth century a number of philosophers and theorists adopted Machiavelli or Hobbes as the intellectual progenitors of their politics. In the 1930s, the Italian Fascist Alfredo Rocco singled out Machiavelli as 22

Th e Or igins o f Real ism Revisit ed the founding father of Fascism. Conversely, Antonio Gramsci forcefully argued that Machiavelli was the pre-incarnation of Lenin. Hobbes, too, witnessed a twentieth-century struggle between competitors who wished to lay claim to his intellectual bones. In the late 1930s there was a lively debate between those who argued that there was a link between Hobbes and totalitarianism and those who strongly denied it. In 1938, for example, Taylor interpreted Hobbes’s theory as a deontology – a theme developed later by Warrender. According to this view, there is more than prudential morality in Hobbes’s argument, and as such Hobbes is a precursor of Kant. In the same year Carl Schmitt wrote his work on Hobbes’s Leviathan and argued that Hobbes was in fact the forerunner of Spinoza and liberal constitutionalism. What does realism have in common with all these other ‘isms’ – Leninism, Fascism, totalitarianism, nationalism and liberalism – that in the twentieth century have claimed Machiavelli or Hobbes as their founding fathers? Although there is scope for debate, it can be argued that realism shares a fundamental feature with all these worldviews: it is, like them, an ideology. Of course, it is well known that ‘ideology is the most elusive concept in the whole of social science’ (McLellan 1987, 1). Even so, theorists claim that ideologies have a number of distinctive features that distinguish them from traditions of thought, scientific paradigms or philosophical frameworks. In particular, we are often told that ideologies contain three basic ingredients: a description of the world, a prescription of a better world, and a strategy on how to move from what it is to what ought to be. Prima facie realism does not appear to be an ideology as it rejects the idealization of the world and the idea of moving from what is to what ought to be. However, the normative aspect of realism is easily uncovered: the attempt to conserve the world as we find it is as ideological as it is to try to change it. And to offer a description of the world focused on security as its fundamental concern is as ideological as to offer a description of the world based on different priorities. Even the selected reading of classical texts by realists is ideological and not random. Why focus on the passages where Hobbes talks of eternal human nature desiring power after power and not on passages where Hobbes claims that the desires of men can be shaped by means of education and training? Why consider what Machiavelli says about necessity and not his reflections on how virtù can control and modify human destiny? Also, the tendency to offer grand narratives of the political that explain everything from the dawn of time until the present is a typical feature of the ideologies of modernity. Brian Schmidt writes: While symbolically or metaphorically, contemporary practitioners may wish to describe themselves as descendants of Thucydides or Kant, a serious conceptual mistake is made when the history of the field is written in terms of the development of an epic tradition beginning with classical Greece or the Enlightenment and culminating in the works of contemporary scholars (2002, 7). Schmidt’s claim is particularly true when applied to realism. 23

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Conclusion This chapter has suggested that realism is not a neutral framework or a philosophical orientation or a scientific paradigm. Its interest in Thucydides, Machiavelli and Hobbes is neither historical nor analytical. The epic rendition of the past and the tendency to claim illustrious founding fathers is typical of the ideologies of modernity. To claim that realism is an ideology is indeed only a small and modest step; yet it is an important step on the path to capturing its essence.

References Aubrey, J. (1982), Brief Lives (Wellingborough: Boydell Press). Beitz, C. (1979), Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Bodin, J. (1955), Six Books of the Commonwealth (Oxford: Blackwell ). Boucher, D . (1998), Political Theories of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Brown, C. (1992), International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf). — (2002a), Sovereignty, Rights and Justice: International Political Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity Press). —, Nardin, T., and Rengger, N. (eds) (2002b), International Relations in Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Bull, H. (1995), The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan). Carr, E.H. (2001), The Twenty Years’ Crisis (Basingstoke: Palgrave). D onnelly, J. (2000), Realism and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). D oyle, M. (1997), Ways of War and Peace (London: W.W. Norton). Evans, G., and Newnham, J. (1998), Dictionary of International Relations (London: Penguin). Forsyth, M. (1979), ‘Thomas Hobbes and the External Relations of States’, British Journal of International Studies 5:3, 196–209. Garnett, J.C. (1984), Commonsense and the Theory of International Politics (London: Macmillan). Gauthier, D . (1969), The Logic of Leviathan (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Gilpin, R. (1996), ‘No One Loves a Political Realist’, Security Studies 5, 3–26. Hanson, D .W. (1984), ‘Thomas Hobbes’s Highway to Peace’, International Organization 38:2, 329–54. Hampton, J. (1986), Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 

I wish to thank the editor of this volume for his patience and advice. 24

Th e Or igins o f Real ism Revisit ed Hardin, R. (1991), ‘Hobbesian Political Order’, Political Theory 19:2, 156–180. Hobbes, T. (trans.) (1843), The History of the Grecian War Written by Thucydides, vols VIII and IX in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, ed. Sir William Molesworth, London. — (1990), Behemoth, or the Long Parliament (Chicago: Chicago University Press). — (1991), Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Jackson, R. (2007), Sovereignty (Cambridge: Polity Press). Kant, I. (1991), Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kavka, G. (1986), Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). — (1988), ‘Nuclear Weapons and World Government’, Monist 70:3, 298–315. Klosko, G., and Rice, D . (1985), ‘Thucydides and Hobbes’s State of Nature’, History of Political Thought 6:4, 405–9. Lyons, G.M., and Mastanduno, M. (eds) (1995), Beyond Westphalia? State Sovereignty and International Intervention (Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press). Machiavelli, N. (1970), The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy (Harmondsworth: Penguin). — (1995), The Prince (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett). McLellan, D . (1987), Ideology (Buckingham: Open University Press). Malcolm, N. (1994), The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press). — (2002), Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Meinecke, F. (1957), Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison d’Etat and its Place in Modern History (London: Kegan Paul). Morgenthau, H. (1948), Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf). Neal, P. (1988), ‘Hobbes and Rational Choice Theory’, Western Political Quarterly 41:4, 635–52. Schmidt, B.C. (2002), ‘On the History and Historiography of International Relations’, in Carlsnaes, W., Risse, T., and Simmons, B. (eds), Handbook of International Relations (London: Sage), 3–22. Schmitt, C. (1996), The Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press). — (1988), The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Skinner, Q. (1964), ‘Review: Hobbes’s Leviathan’, The Historical Journal 7, 321–33. — (1978), The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). — (1981), Machiavelli (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Slomp, G. (1990), ‘Hobbes, Thucydides and the Three Greatest Things’, History of Political Thought 11:4, 565–86. — (1994), ‘Hobbes and Equality’, Political Studies 42:3, 441–52. — (2000), Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory (Basingstoke: Macmillan). — (2007a), ‘Kant Against Hobbes: Reasoning and Rhetoric’, Journal of Moral Philosophy 4:2, 208–23. 25

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns — (2007b), ‘Hobbes on Glory and Civil Strife’, in Springborg, P. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). — and La Manna, M. (1996), ‘Hobbes, Harsanyi and the Edge of the Abyss’, Canadian Journal of Political Science 29:1, 159–72. Sorell, T. (1986), Hobbes (London: Routledge). Taylor, A.E. (1938), ‘The Ethical D octrine of Hobbes’, Philosophy 13:52, 406–24. Tuck, R. (1999), The Rights of War and Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Vincent, R.J. (1981), ‘The Hobbesian Tradition in Twentieth-Century International Thought’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 10:2, 91–101. Waltz, K. (2008), Realism and International Politics (New York: Routledge). Warrender, H. (1957), The Political Philosophy of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Wight, M. (1995), Power Politics (New York and London: Continuum). Williams, H. (1992), International Relations in Political Theory (Milton Keynes: Open University Press). — (2003), Kant’s Critique of Hobbes: Sovereignty and Cosmopolitanism (Cardiff: University of Wales Press). Williams, M.C. (1996), ‘Hobbes and International Relations: A Reconsideration’, International Organization 50:2, 213–36.

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2 Liberalism Andrew Williams A large part of history is … replete with the struggle for … human rights, an eternal struggle in which a final victory can never be won. But to tire in the struggle would mean the ruin of society (Einstein 1954, 35). Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness (Matthew 23:27).

Introduction: What is Liberalism? Liberalism is at the heart of the project that we usually call ‘the West’. It is a ‘Grand Theory’ like practically no other, in that it expresses a ‘systematic theory of “the nature of man and society”’ (Mills 1959, 23). And yet it has been formulated by so many thinkers and policy-makers in so many ways as to defy neat categorization. Perhaps this is why so many liberals have decried the very idea of ‘Grand Theory’, a condemnation that Quentin Skinner (1985, 3–4) has noted as being a common feeling of some very prominent liberal thinkers, with Sir Lewis Namier, the great ‘Whig’ historian, and Karl Popper, that Hammer of the Left (and of all ‘utopian’ thought), as archetypal debunkers of any school of thought that aims at explaining and understanding everything. Yet that is precisely what liberalism does. It is its great strength and its ultimate weakness, as open to attack as any all-encompassing theory. The difference with this theory, as distinct from Marxism, for example, is that it espouses an ideology of openness and non-discrimination with such fervour that it inevitably opens itself up to attack from multiple angles and lays itself bare for charges of hypocrisy and duplicity in a way that no other grand theoretical framework does. So when an American or British politician claims that he is ordering troops into an oil-producing Middle Eastern country for the purpose of freeing the local population from a ‘tyrant’, eyebrows are raised in a way they never would have been when a Soviet politician ordered his troops to defend ‘socialist order and the international proletariat’ in Hungary or Afghanistan, or a German nationalist his troops to uphold German ‘dignity’ in Poland. All ideologies

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns and totalitarian states have claimed liberal language for their own. The Chinese National Anthem has the line ‘[l]et us stand up and fight for liberty and true democracy’ while having scant regard for either. Many writers like Karl Popper and J.L. Talmon have identified totalitarianism as liberalism’s most obvious enemy and an optimistic liberal opinion would rightly be that totalitarianism has been defeated more often than it has won against liberalism (Talmon, 1961; Popper 1971). Outrage there may well be in these cases, and hypocrisy is the least of the charges against them. But liberalism claims to mean what it says on liberty and democracy, and this is both its strength and its weakness. This chapter will examine why that is the case, and do so by examining the evolution of the liberal idea and how it often seems to founder on ‘hard cases’. The areas I have chosen to consider (obviously there are many others) are those of how the liberal should view the links between the individual and the community; how liberals have looked at questions of international intervention in the affairs of other states; and how they think wealth should be created and distributed in an equitable manner – what is known in political theory as ‘distributive justice’. These categories of thought and action, in the domestic, international and economic spheres are clearly linked as our increasingly global system has been the product of liberalism’s slow but steady advance over the last two centuries. But they also show up liberalism’s internal contradictions. For instance, capitalism – the major lasting economic legacy of liberalism – claims to liberate the individual to become rich, and has spread its practices across the globe, mainly because of capitalism being forcibly exported by imperial powers and by the less forcible but nonetheless inexorable spread of market forces. Capitalism has undoubtedly made the globe vastly more prosperous, but wealth has been unevenly distributed, with billions languishing in poverty while their neighbours live in conditions of unbelievable riches. Equally, I will suggest that liberalism’s main political child, democracy, is, in Winston Churchill’s definition ‘the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time’. Thus the approach here will be to take a number of categories within which liberalism’s great strengths and evident weaknesses (historical and case-based) can be demonstrated, and then show how these strengths and weaknesses can be best be illuminated.



 

Engel (2008). The other endearing quality of liberal democracies like the UK is that they can never match the efficient political machinery of states like the Peoples’ Republic of China, but they do not execute so many of those ‘people’ quite so efficiently either. Engel comments: ‘And all the while we thought the Chinese leadership had no sense of humour. No, liberty is not their strong point.’ It must be said that Popper’s identification of Plato as one of the key enemies of the open society is open to some incredulity, but his other candidates, Hegel and Marx in particular, may be justifiable targets. Churchill, Speech to the House of Commons, 11 November 1947. 28

Liber al ism

Liberalism Defined As C.B. Macpherson (1962) suggested, every political theory requires a conception of the person, and liberalism is that theory par excellence. Whereas Marxism and conservatism can be said to be theories that privilege community above all, liberalism is the theory of the emancipation of the person. Conventional definitions of liberalism always contain four basic elements, as summed up by John Gray: Liberalism is individualist, in that it asserts the moral primacy of the person against the claims of any other social collectivity; egalitarian inasmuch as it confers on all humans the same moral status and denies the relevance to legal or political order of differences in moral worth among human beings; universalist, affirming the moral unity of the human species and according secondary importance to specific historical associations and cultural forms; and meliorist in its affirmation of the corrigibility and improvability of all social institutions and political arrangements (1986, 10). This definition can only be accepted in general terms however for, as Richard Bellamy has pointed out, all of these categories have been developed within particular societal contexts at different historical epochs and under particular geographical, cultural and social conditions. Bellamy (2000) does nonetheless accept that liberalism embodies a generalized philosophical acceptance of the principles of ‘equality, liberty, individuality and rationality’; a social commitment to notions of ‘liberal individualism’; a ‘general concern with protecting each individual’s ability to pursue his or her own conception of the good’; and politically, ‘a strict distinction of state and civil society, as well as a commitment to the rule of law and parliamentarism’. Liberals also like to think that they are creatures driven by ethical imperatives, and especially the idea of what Kant called the ‘categorical imperative’, which bids us to treat others as having value in themselves, and to act in accordance with principles that are valid for all other actors. An actor’s moral motives are therefore a key part of a liberal’s analysis of the actor and of others. Reason is the key for Kant in determining what these motives are (D onaldson 1992, 136–7). Of course this ‘do as you would be done by’ maxim has a bit of an ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’ feel to it. ‘Reciprocal justice’ has a very grand ring to it but how many humans act out of such disinterested motivation? All manner of realists will attack such pious claims, and not without reason as many of the names associated with such statements are of religious origin. But it is in the use of the idea that we see the problem writ large. Bellamy uses the critique of Carl Schmitt to point to a few evident problems with the operationalization of the reciprocal idea of ‘democracy’ over time. Parliamentarianism and democracy are not necessarily equivalent, for example, and the rule of law can be oppressive as well as liberating. Industrial societies create hierarchies of power so that the rich tend to get more of their agenda respected. In short, Schmitt believed that ‘mass democracy deforms rather than reinforces liberalism’ (Bellamy 2000, 68–76). This is a view partly shared 29

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns by more ardent defenders of liberalism like Alexis de Tocqueville and J.D . Talmon, as we will see below. Notwithstanding these clear caveats, liberalism can be said to encompass a number of concepts that have come to define what is now seen as a basic political ‘good’ in the core countries of the West and far beyond. Hence, Gray’s definition of modern liberalism may be a good summary but it does not cover all of the signposts along the route to now (Williams 2006, Chapters 1 and 2). One area that is not addressed by these definitions and their critics is that of how liberals have realized that to bring about the kind of ‘progress’ (or ‘meliorism’) they desire, they have to observe and try to influence not only the domestic but also the international sphere. James Bryce, a great nineteenth-century British liberal, said in 1922 that for him liberalism did not just mean … that blind faith in the certainty of human progress … but rather that aspiration for a world more enlightened and more happy than that which we see today, a world in which the cooperation of men and nations rather then their rivalry and the aggrandizement of one at the expense of the other, shall be the guiding aims. This way of seeing liberalism also includes the idea of ‘fairness’ both in domestic and international life that has continued to be a key debate within liberalism and against it. Kant was the first notable modern advocate of a cosmopolitan liberal view that a different kind of international ‘order’ is necessary before economic and political ‘justice’ and the legislation of human rights can become the necessary bases of any national or international order (D onaldson 1992). The idea of ‘fairness’ has been a feature of much liberal thinking ever since the emergence of the ‘new liberalism’ in the nineteenth century, with L.T. Hobhouse (1964), T.H. Green (1883) and others stressing the responsibilities of rich societies to care for their weaker members. In the period after 1900, and particularly after 1945, this came to mean variants on Franklin D elano Roosevelt’s ‘New D eal’ or the British welfare state. But there has always been a tension between this welfare approach and that of the above-mentioned individualism, which predates the ‘new liberalism’ and has its roots in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century classical liberalism of John Locke (1690) and Adam Smith (1776), the political and economic fathers of liberalism. This critique was at the heart of Macpherson’s ‘possessive individualism’, and has seen political form in a periodic reaction against welfarism. This was especially so in the 1980s in Britain where Margaret Thatcher’s dictum ‘there is no such thing as society’ came to be emblematic of an uncaring free-market individualistic liberalism that was prepared to throw vast numbers of miners and others onto the dole queue in the name of ‘progress’. A last area that is both distinctly ‘liberal’ and also distinctly ambiguous lies in the natural continuation of individualism into the political, social and cultural realm – that of ‘human rights’. As D avid Forsythe (2000, 3) has put it: ‘In the classical liberal view, the good society is based on respect for the equality and autonomy of individuals, which is secured through the recognition and application of the 30

Liber al ism fundamental legal rights of that person … liberalism is a synonym for attention to personal rights’. Again, we can point to problems that arise when we try and impose ‘our’ views of what rights are, as compared to ‘their’ ideas of what these should comprise. But like motherhood and apple pie, who can disagree that rights are a ‘good’ thing? To say otherwise lays us open immediately to charges of ‘cultural relativism’, an argument that says, essentially if brutally, that ‘we’ would obviously not tolerate certain practices (female circumcision, child-beating, capital punishment) but that it is alright elsewhere as ‘they’ have different cultural norms. However, should those who live in glasshouses throw stones – surely we also have practices that ‘others’ find abhorrent? Alexis de Tocqueville is a seminal thinker for an understanding of how communities can be liberated and how they can also oppress using the basic tenet of the liberal credo. It might seem strange to emphasize him rather than the betterknown ‘fathers’ of liberalism like John Locke and Jeremy Bentham, but his approach is useful in that it encompasses critiques of both Locke’s and Bentham’s theories while not denying their fundamental virtues. D e Tocqueville is also a useful starting point in that he had observed at close hand the negative side of democracy in the French Revolution and also the emergence of a new American liberal democracy in the early nineteenth century. He was thus much more of a man of the modern age than Locke, whose theorizing about liberalism took place in the context of a very embryonic parliamentary democracy in pre-industrial seventeenth-century Britain. Locke nonetheless had a great rhetorical influence on the constitutional arrangements of the young American Republic (see D oyle 1997). The main prediction by de Tocqueville, that the ‘Anglo-Américains’ and the Russians would come to be the dominant world powers was a brave one when he wrote it in 1833–35. It reflected his belief that liberal democracy would prove to be one of the most dominant future political and ideological forces on the planet at a time when there was arguably only one real democracy in existence – the United States. He ‘knew that [he] was walking on difficult ground [terrain brûlant]’ for in Europe the peoples’ voice was rarely heard while in the US ‘the people dominate in all things [sans obstacles]’ (Tocqueville 1981; Guellec 2005). Universal suffrage, support for the rule of law, and freedom of speech could give rise to the sublime rhetoric of the D eclaration of Independence of 1776 and the Constitution of 1784, but they could also lead to the down-treading of the native population and ultimately to a ‘perfect equality and an illusory freedom … a world without belief or conviction, inhabited by mild, will-less ruminants … a benevolent totalitarianism’ (Kaledin 2005). Many might say they see this world reflected in the consumerist nightmare of the present-day US, but Kaledin stresses that de Tocqueville also saw a more happy potential outcome for American democracy, namely, ‘the possibility of a democratic future of unparalleled political and cultural activity, new form of community, a broader idea of humanity, and warmer, more natural human relationships’ (ibid., 48–9). Edmund Burke, who has been claimed by both liberals and conservatives as one of their great prophets, prefigured de Tocqueville in seeing the potential dangers of democracy becoming totalitarian. Burke’s opposition to the French Revolution in the 1790s reflected what Jennifer Welsh calls his conservative ‘empiricism and its 31

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns denunciation of metaphysical discussions of what constitutes the “good”’ (Welsh 1995, 11), but he was also a major supporter of the American desire for ‘liberty’, a metaphysical idea if ever there was one. His support for the American Revolution as one ‘within a tradition’ as opposed to the French ‘revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions’ (ibid., 93) was mainly due to the way the French revolutionaries behaved, not their initial ideological impulse. He was also outraged by the French having, as he saw it, broken up the society of states that existed before the French Revolution (also often known as ‘Christendom’) which worked according to generally accepted rules that the French so flagrantly breached in the 1790s (ibid.; Brown 2002). Chris Brown points out that they may have done so in some areas (chopping off the King’s head and invading a lot of Europe to ‘liberate’ it being two obvious examples) but there was a regular Anglo-French boat link between Calais and D over (the ‘packet’) and British participants at Parisian scientific congresses throughout the Napoleonic Wars (2002, 34). Of course, both de Tocqueville’s and Burke’s visions have continued to epitomize our dualistic view of what the US, or indeed France, represents in terms of the potential for liberal regimes to deny or encourage freedom and therein lies their enduring fascination. As with Britain in the nineteenth century, so with the US in the twentieth, the great liberal power carries all the contradictions of liberal greatness of their respective epochs as their special burden. This is best shown by liberalism’s actions in the international sphere, whether it be under British or American direction.

Liberalism, War, Interventionism and Imperialism As we have by now seen, liberalism, an ideology with a clear idea of the ‘good’, has inevitable cross-border ramifications. When the record of liberalism is applied to the international sphere and the perceived need to intervene to ‘keep the peace’, prop up a ‘failed state’ or deal with a ‘humanitarian disaster’, this statement comes to life even more strongly. Liberalism has been the most active player on the international stage of all other ideologies. Not even Soviet Marxism, and certainly not National Socialism, can be said to have had such a lasting and global impact. Liberalism has claimed the need for global solutions based on the language of rights and the search for the ‘good’. Kant, whose thinking on the international has already been mentioned above, is the liberal philosopher most associated with a society of states that would be based on republics, even a proto-world government based on liberal and ‘cosmopolitan’ principles. The way that this Enlightenment philosopher, and his brethren, saw such an international system would be one that would sweep aside the old obscurantism of religion and intolerance and bring us into a new era of emancipation and ‘Perpetual Peace’ as he put it in a celebrated tract of 1794 (Brown 2002, 40–46). This is a cry that we have heard many times since, in Marxism, other forms of socialism and endlessly 

The next few paragraphs draw on Williams (2007, 300–304). 32

Liber al ism for all sorts of supporters and deniers of liberalism. The United Nations is a clear beneficiary of such thinking, for example. But as a result of the mixing of liberal ideas, power and influence, even the most sacrosanct of liberal icons can now be assailed. Mark Hoffmann has rightly written that ‘international affairs have been the nemesis of liberalism’ (cited in Smith 1992, 201). Liberal states, and especially the hegemonic ‘Anglo-Americans’ have seen themselves pilloried for excessive zeal in their desire to spread their self-defined ‘morality’ or ‘ethics’ and democracy by force over the last two hundred years, as with the declaration of an ‘ethical foreign policy’ by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook in 1997 (Smith and Light 2001). The latest version of this liberal ‘proselytizing’ can be found in the wrongly named ‘neoconservatism’ or, perhaps more rightly, ‘militant liberal Wilsonianism’ and actions against ‘Islamo-fascism’ in Afghanistan and Iraq (see Williams 2007, Conclusion). Maybe one reason for this zeal is that liberals put so much Kantian emphasis on ‘reason’ and a duty to find the ‘moral’ course to take that they forget that others do not reason or moralize in the same way as they do? This has arguably long been the case when the epithet ‘imperialism’ is juxtaposed with the term ‘liberalism’. Locke has been accused of creating a distinction in liberal states’ treatment of those populations who exist in a ‘state of war’ and those in a ‘state of nature’. The former are those who seemingly obey and respect no clear laws and thus put themselves beyond the pale (D oyle 1997, 216–26; Williams 2006, 21–4). Even John Stuart Mill has not escaped opprobrium on these grounds. Joseph Hamburger asked ‘How Liberal was John Stuart Mill?’ (1995, 109–22), while Beate Jahn attacked Mill for his ‘imperialism’ (Jahn 2005, 599–618), though it must be said that the basis for this was his seeking the invasion and suppression of the Barbary pirate kingdoms of North Africa. Mill’s 1859 tract A Few Words on Non-Intervention has clearly influenced liberal policy-makers and thinkers who believe that non-intervention should be the norm, but dealing with ‘primitive peoples’ can constitute an exception to this norm (Brown et al. 2002, 486). What could be more obviously ‘primitive’ than the Taleban or the Shia militias of Moqtadr el-Sadr, we might ask? But must ‘intervention’ therefore always be ‘imperialist’? Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s foreign policy advisor Robert Cooper is a recent convert to justifying selective intervention, as he does in his book The Breaking of Nations (2004). His use of the epithet ‘liberal imperialism’ to describe Blair’s foreign policy in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 was not used with irony or distaste. Others have compared ‘humanitarian intervention’ (Wheeler 2000), now enshrined in a UN General Assembly Resolution as the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ with such thinking (Welsh 2004). But is not intervention just that, whatever the justification? The same logic used by Mill to defend ‘illiberal’ attacks on other states and peoples is now being used to justify dealing with ‘failed states’ in Africa and elsewhere. The liberal is seemingly always being thrust back onto ‘realist’ actions by necessity and self-defence. Again the communitarian attack on interventionist liberalism strikes home – we act because what we need to do is ‘right’ for us, not necessarily ‘good’ for ‘them’.

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns The tradition of using liberal principles to justify ‘imperialist’ practices thus pre-dates the modern era by over a hundred years. D uncan Bell’s (2005) article on John Robert Seeley, the Victorian ‘public intellectual’ and historian, shows this well. Seeley had a ‘good claim to being the individual most responsible for broadening the imaginative horizons of Victorian political thought’, yet was clearly a ‘realist’ in that he is often seen as being in the same political lineage as George Kennan, Martin Wight, Herbert Butterfield or Reinhold Niebuhr, some key members of the realist canon (as for example by D eudney 2001). Bell shows how Seeley has been subsumed into what Karma Nabulsi (1999) calls the ‘martialist’ tradition of late nineteenth-century thinkers who lauded the development of the Britain Empire. But as Bell points out, he was also a fervent believer in ‘progress’ and ‘[l]ike many liberals, he [Seeley] supported the utilization of political violence in the struggle for national liberation’. He was a great supporter of Kantian and other ideas of federation, in line with many liberals of his day and since, even to the point of a ‘federal Greater Britain and a reunion with America’. His imperialism was that of the typical liberal, one which saw the Empire as ‘civilizing’ and having within it a ‘moral obligation to support [for example] the Indian people in the quest for progress…. The British, that is, were to act as the midwives of Indian modernity’. As Bell goes on to say: ‘Once again, such a heavily moralized concern with what we might now call “nation-building” does not find prominent place in the constellation of realist thought’ (Bell 2005, 567). So how can Seeley (or for that matter Mill, Locke or Blair) be a liberal in some ways but not others? D avid Williams (2001) has suggested that liberalism as a ‘political project’ is not just ‘the production of theoretically justified ends and arrangements’. It has to include a ‘sociological and political account of the barriers to achieving those desirable ends and arrangements’, it ‘involves the use of certain characteristic “techniques of transformation” [and it] can only be a project embodied in a political agency’. It has, in other words, no reality without practice. A greater test than imperialism of such practice is surely liberalism’s attitude to war itself, the great leveller of international and national politics. If James Bryce’s comments above were sincere in wishing liberalism to be seen as trying to bring about a better way of doing international relations, without constant recourse to war, then how can that be seen as having had any success in practice? One answer lies in the belief that liberty has on occasion to be fought for. Prominent early twentieth-century British liberal Gilbert Murray opined: ‘Nothing but the sincere practice of liberal principles will save European society from imminent revolutions and collapse’ (Morefield 2005, 1). On another occasion in 1921 he wrote: I start from the profound conviction that what the world needs is peace. There has been too much war, and too much of too many things that go with war…. Before the [Great] war I was a Liberal, and I believe now that nothing but the sincere practice of Liberal principles will save European society from imminent revolution and collapse (1921, 5–6).

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Liber al ism He had had no problem in supporting the war against Germany; ‘Of course I supported the war. I believe it was necessary’ (ibid.). This belief was once again shaken by experience. The 1930s were a period of particular challenge for liberalism, as capitalism seemingly collapsed across much of Europe and democracy came under great strain. In the heartlands of the US and the UK ‘planning’ became the order of the day, and government interference in economic life became accepted in a way that would have been unthinkable before 1914. L.T. Hobhouse predicted that liberalism would be in trouble even before 1914: ‘The nineteenth century might be called the age of Liberalism, yet its close saw the fortunes of that great movement bought to their lowest ebb’ (1964, 110). Another prophet of doom, Reinhold Niebuhr, the celebrated theological ‘realist’, predicted the end of the age of liberalism was nigh in 1934 in that there were forces developing even then that he thought would put an end to the age of seemingly unending progress that had produced such liberty of thought and action in the West (Lovin 2008, 158). These forces would be both political and economic. The political he saw in the rise of the totalitarian dictatorships, the economic was emerging in what we would now call ‘globalization’ and the apocalyptic results of global climate change. Such apocalyptic thinking was not the preserve of theologians. The emergence of what, at the time, seemed to be the counter-promise of liberalism – the Soviet system – led Stephen Spender to write a tract entitled Forward From Liberalism. Although his flirtation with the Communist Party of Great Britain was brief, as he was expelled for being, predictably, unable to conform to strict Party guidance, he represented a whole generation of young Western intellectuals who felt that liberal democracy was doomed. Spender was not wrong when he said: ‘D emocracies are passing through a stage of acute disappointment with the very limited and ineffective political power which they enjoy’ (1937, 17). Such paralysis was indeed to lead to ‘apathy [and] despair’, for liberal democracy only works when the people feel themselves empowered by it to change their lives and those of others, for the better. In the contemporary era after the end of the Cold War, several pundits have declared that liberalism had finally triumphed. The ‘End of History’ has been announced by Francis Fukuyama with his claim that ‘the modern liberal democratic state … is free of contradictions’ and that the world will from now on become a ‘universal and homogenous state … resting on the twin pillars of economics and recognition’ (1992, 139, 204). But even he encapsulated the inherent pessimism of all liberal triumphalism by warning in his book’s title about the dangers of excessive consumerism, in the figure of Nietzsche’s ‘Last Man’. Since 1992 a whole industry has sprung up to denounce such ‘speech acts’ and ‘critical theory’ has been reborn to attack liberalism on its own turf of excessive ‘possessive individualism’ and lack of emancipatory politics (see el-Ojeili and Hayden 2006, 10). In the international sphere that critique has concentrated on the evident contradictions of the Kantian claim that Western triumph in the Cold War has led to an unthinking imposition of the ‘liberal’ (or ‘democratic’) peace in attempts to bring democracy to states that cannot handle it or capitalism to places that will be destroyed by it (see Richmond 2005; MacGinty and Williams 2009). One of the key accusations is that liberalism 35

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns rides roughshod over local cultures and practices, that it misunderstands the very nature of what it seeks to transform, which is often local ‘identity’, and is in the process self-destructive and also destructive of the ‘other’ (see, for example, Krause and Williams 1997).

Distributive ‘Justice’ Along with its desire to bring peoples into Locke’s ‘civil society’, liberalism has both figuratively and actually always put emphasis on both economic efficiency and justice. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations of 1776 and his classical economic liberal followers could see no problem with the idea that increasing the economic pie through capitalism would benefit all classes of society though the notion of ‘comparative advantage’. The encouragement of trade has played a significant role in this liberal thinking about comparative advantage ever since, as well as the idea that trade links encourage peace. As Jacoby has succinctly put it: ‘Living freely is thus trading freely’ (2007, 524). The question has always been, and will continue to be, how this justice can be delivered in economic terms; that is, how wealth can be both created and distributed. Socialism, it has often been suggested, is bad on the first count, but very keen on the second; liberals argue about how to balance the two. But we also need to ask what ‘justice’ means. Brian Barry suggests that there are two versions of this, ‘justice as mutual advantage and … justice as impartiality’. Both derive from the observation that in all societies and also across societies there are ‘unequal relations between people’, the ‘high’ and the ‘low’. In justice as ‘mutual advantage’ we are asked to accept that hierarchy is inevitable and that therefore cooperation is better than conflict, a policy of ‘rational prudence’. In the second way of thinking about it, Barry says that justice should be based on ‘impartiality’ in that for those lower down the pecking order not only ‘is a just state of affairs … one that people can accept not merely in the sense that they cannot reasonably expect to get more but in the stronger sense that they cannot reasonably claim more’ (1989, 3–9). This view of justice is much more in the utilitarian mode of Bentham of the beginning of the nineteenth century than in the ‘new’ liberal mode of the end of it. Brown makes a similar point: international ‘justice’ meant for many centuries ‘respect for the rights of sovereigns’ not ‘social’ rights (2002, 9). So why should there be ‘distributive justice’ not only within states but also internationally? John Stuart Mill’s attack on Benthamite utilitarianism (which led to a more welfarist turn in liberal thinking and practice) and the New Liberalism of the nineteenth century (which led to even more of the same) showed a clear commitment to economic as well as political fairness. In recent years, as has been mentioned, John Rawls’s book A Theory of Justice of 1971 is seen as the most stimulating statement of this principle. Richard Rorty, who in the US is seen as, and described himself as, a ‘leftist’ (1998), is another writer who might be said to have unusually pursued the idea of American ‘welfare-state liberalism’. So liberals from Locke in the seventeenth century, through Kant and Mill in the eighteenth and nineteenth, and Rawls (1971; 36

Liber al ism 1993) in the late twentieth centuries have all had the idea that communities can be made fairer or more just by the application of liberal principles. Each of these reiterations of that basic idea has evoked their counter-arguers. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Jean-Jacques Rousseau and G.W.F. Hegel posited that freedom and justice could only come through the liberating role of the state, and that without such institutions individual liberty was meaningless. In a comment on this communitarian debate Michael Sandel summed it up as a debate ‘on the challenge to the priority of the right over the good’ (see Mulhall and Swift 1992). Others have also seen problems in Rawls’s absolute belief in the need for fairness in domestic and, though Rawls does not claim this, international society. For Michael Walzer (1992), for example, this personalizing of politics is again a problem given that the inevitable consequence of such thinking may be to interfere in the lives of individuals and polities that do not want such interference, which leads to internal contradictions within the liberal impulse itself. Much of the communitarian critique of liberalism is, again not directed at overthrowing its tenets but rather not wanting it to be imposed on those who do not choose it of their own free will (Mulhall and Swift 1992) It is a tension at the heart of liberalism, summed up by Isaiah Berlin as the clash between ‘positive’ (‘freedom which consists in being one’s own master’) and ‘negative’ (‘not being prevented from choosing as I do by other men’) freedoms (Bellamy 2000, Chapter 2).

Conclusions: Simpering Idealists or Monstrous Imperialists? What is striking in all of this is that for such a vibrant, if contested, ideology, liberalism has been declared dead very many times. All the way through the twentieth century its ‘optimism’ has been deemed dangerous or deluded. Georges Sorel wrote that ‘the optimist in politics is an inconstant and even dangerous man, because he takes no account of the great difficulties presented by his projects … Liberal political economy is one of the best examples of a Utopia that could be given’ (1941, 9, 33). John Pilger, a prominent journalist for the New Statesman, itself a British periodical that has its roots firmly embedded in the liberal tradition of the beginning of the twentieth century, asserted that ‘[s]hould Obama beat John McCain to the White House in November it will be liberalism’s last fling. In the United States and Britain, liberalism as war-making, divisive ideology is once again being used to destroy liberalism as a reality’ (2008, 32). Richard Bellamy has called the nineteenth century the ‘golden age of liberalism’ (2000), as did Hobhouse, quoted above, and it was against the complacency of a seemingly triumphant liberal capitalism that Sorel was railing. He might just as well have been complaining about Norman Angell in The Great Illusion (1910) proclaiming war as illogical and therefore impossible between 

Bellamy denies Berlin’s claim that Mill is a representative of ‘positive’ freedom and Green of ‘negative’. 37

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns the great powers of Europe. Right and Left in Western politics have always simultaneously accused liberalism of perpetrating what Johan Galtung (1969) terms ‘structural violence’, or misunderstanding the necessary purificatory violence by the working class, advocated by the syndicalist Sorel or indeed the national socialists Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. This way of reasoning has formed the basis for criticizing liberalism, which always resorts to violence in what it always claims is ‘the last resort’. Hence the easy accusations of hypocrisy, of covering up the ‘real’ motives of a dominant capitalist bourgeoisie, with the fine words of liberal emancipation. So what conclusions can we draw after briefly examining the evidence for the prosecution and the defence? Liberalism has been widely attacked for its conflation of ‘justice’ and ‘fairness’, especially in light of the domestic and international experience of politics in the past century. Perhaps liberalism is at its best when it pursues what philosopher Gillian Rose (1997) terms ‘good enough justice’ – a recognition that there is no perfection and therefore that we have to try to achieve it by accepting inevitable moral compromises. This is a hopeful way of looking at the world, and counters both liberal hubris in its desire to ‘fix’ the world’s ills, and poststructural inertia, in its tendency to wallow in them. Another way might be to ask if the liberal knight has more dragons to slay in the seeming triumph of globalization and the widespread acceptance of the norms of democracy and human rights. Indeed he or she does. Extreme and potentially violent nationalism still rears its head, and increasingly so, in China and Russia. More worrying is that there are nations who would consider themselves ‘liberal’, like the French, that talk about the problems of ‘hyper-liberalisme’ and the ‘détournement’ by the US of the principles of the Rights of Man that France did so much to promote (see Laurent 2006). If the liberal credo has been declared dead in error over three centuries, might this one prove to be its last? Maybe liberalism just represents the ‘optimistic’ side of thinking in the West about the possibility of political agency, with Sorel and others cited above the ‘pessimists’. When the West feels good about itself, as in 1990–92 or most of the nineteenth century, liberalism flourishes. When the West is despondent, as it is now, liberalism is put on the back foot. But it would be dangerous to predict its total demise any time soon.

References Angell, N. (1910), The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage (London: Heinemann). Barry, B. (ed.) (1989), Theories of Justice, vol. I (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester). Bell, D . (2005), ‘Unity and D ifference: John Robert Seeley and the Political Theology of International Relations’, Review of International Studies 31:3, 559–80. 

Although Rose herself is not of liberal persuasion. My thanks to Kate Schick for this quote. 38

Liber al ism — (2007), The Idea of a Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860– 1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Bellamy, R. (2000), Rethinking Liberalism (London: Continuum). Brown, C. (2002), Sovereignty, Rights and Justice: International Political Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity). —, Nardin, T., and Rengger, N. (eds) (2002), International Relations in Political Thought: Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Bryce, J. (1922), International Relations (London: Macmillan). Cooper, R. (2004), The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the Twenty-First Century (London: Atlantic/Grove). D eudney, D . (2001), ‘Great Britain or Greater Synthesis? Seeley, Mackinder and Wells on Britain in the Global Industrial Era’, Review of International Studies 27:2, 187–205. D onaldson, T. (1992), ‘Kant’s Global Rationalism’, in Nardin and Mapel (eds). D oyle, Michael, (1997) Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism and Socialism, (New York: W.W. Norton). Einstein, A. (1954), Ideas and Opinions (New York: Wings Books). El-Ojeili, C. and Hayden, P. (2006), Critical Theories of Globalization (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Engel, M. (2008), ‘Beijing Bows out for Cool Britannia’, Financial Times, 25 August. Forsythe, D . (2000), Human Rights in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Fukuyama, F. (1992), The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press). Galtung, J. (1969), ‘Violence, Peace, and Peace Research’, Journal of Peace Research 6:3, 167–91. Gray, J. (1986), Liberalism (Milton Keynes: Open University Press). Green, T.H. (1883), Prolegomena to Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Guellec, L. (2005), Tocqueville et l’esprit de la démocratie (Paris: Les Presses de Sciences Po). Hamburger, J. (1995), ‘How Liberal Was John Stuart Mill?’ in Louis, W. (ed.), Adventures with Britannia: Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain (London: I.B. Tauris). Hobhouse, L.T. (1964 [1911]), Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Jacoby, T. (2007), ‘Hegemony, Modernisation and Post-War Reconstruction’, Global Society 21:4, 521–38. Jahn, B. (2005), ‘Barbarian Thoughts: Imperialism in the Philosophy of John Stuart Mill’, Review of International Studies 31:3, 599–618. Kaledin, A. (2005), ‘Tocqueville’s Apocalypse’, in Guellec (ed.). Krause, K., and Williams, M.C. (1997), Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases (London: Routledge). Laurent, A. (2006), Le Libéralisme Américain: Histoire d’un détournement (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Locke, J. (1988 [1690]), Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 39

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Lovin, R. (2008), Christian Realism and the New Realities (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Macpherson, C.B. (1962), The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press). MacGinty, R., and Williams, A. (2009), Conflict and Development (London: Routledge). Mills, C.W. (1959), The Sociological Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Morefield, J. (2005), Covenants Without Swords: Idealist Liberalism and the Spirit of Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Mulhall, S., and Swift, A. (1992), Liberals and Communitarians, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell). Murray, G. (1921), The Problem of Foreign Policy (London: George Allen & Unwin). Nabulsi, K. (1999), Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance and the Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Nardin, T., and Mapel, D . (1992), Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Pilger, J. (2008), ‘After Bobby: Is this Liberalism’s Last Fling?’, New Statesman, 2 June, 32. Popper, K. (1971), The Open Society and Its Enemies, 5th edn (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Rawls, J. (1971), A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). — (1993), Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press). Richmond, O.P. (2005), The Transformation of Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Rorty, R. (1998), Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Rose, G. (1997), Love’s Work: A Reckoning With Life (London: Vintage). Skinner, Q. (ed.) (1985), The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Smith, A. (1976 [1776]), The Wealth of Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Smith, K., and Light, M. (eds) (2001), Ethics and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Smith, M. (1992), ‘Liberalism and International Reform’, in Nardin and Mapel (eds). Sorel, G. (1941), Reflections on Violence (New York: Peter Smith). Spender, S. (1937), Forward From Liberalism (London: Victor Gollancz). Sylvest, C. (2009), Making Progress? British Liberal Internationalism, 1880–1930 (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Talmon, J.L. (1961), The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Mercury Books). Tocqueville, A. de (1981), De la Démocratie en Amérique (Paris: GarnierFlammarion). Walzer, M. (1992), ‘Justice and Abstraction’, in Mulhall and Swift (eds). Welsh, J. (1995), Edmund Burke and International Relations (London: Macmillan). — (2004), Humanitarian Intervention and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 40

Liber al ism Wheeler, N. (2000), Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Williams, A. (2006), Liberalism and War: The Victors and the Vanquished (London: Routledge). — (2007), Failed Imagination? Anglo-American New World Orders from Wilson to Bush (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Williams, D . (2001), ‘Liberal Theory and Liberal Practice in International Politics’, unpublished manuscript.

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3 Cosmopolitanism Past and Present Patrick Hayden

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in cosmopolitanism in the fields of political theory and international relations. Increasingly, arguments have been advanced that international politics should be seen in terms of universal principles that challenge the presumed moral supremacy of territorial boundaries and which favour instead the well-being of humanity generally. According to cosmopolitanism international politics should focus first on the interests, rights or welfare of persons wherever they may reside rather than on the interests of states as such. This chapter explains what cosmopolitanism is and outlines some of the more prominent ideas, arguments and approaches of the cosmopolitan tradition.

A Concise Definition of Cosmopolitanism What is cosmopolitanism? Answers to this question vary, of course, but we can define cosmopolitanism as the belief that all human beings have equal moral standing within and belong to a single world community. More specifically we can distinguish two fundamental strands of cosmopolitanism: moral cosmopolitanism and legal (or institutional) cosmopolitanism (Pogge 1992, 49). Moral cosmopolitanism holds that all persons stand in certain moral relations with one another by virtue of the fact that they are all members of a universal community. All persons possess equal moral worth deserving of our respect, and certain obligations of justice with regard to other persons place constraints on our conduct. Legal cosmopolitanism contends that a global political order ought to be constructed, grounded on the equal legal rights and duties of all individuals. The emphasis here is on creating or transforming institutional schemes so as to provide concrete procedural and organizational mechanisms dedicated to securing and protecting the human rights of all persons. D espite the basic distinction drawn here, moral and legal cosmopolitanism share a commitment to at least three fundamental tenets: (1) individualism, in that individual human beings are the ultimate units of concern; (2) universality, in that

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns all human beings possess equal moral status; and (3) generality, in that persons are subjects of concern for everyone, that is, human status (or dignity) has global scope (see Pogge 2002, 169; Barry 1999, 35–6; Benhabib 2004, 133). Consequently moral and legal cosmopolitanism are compatible and may be combined in mutually complementary fashion so as to give weight to the ideal of ‘world citizenship’ (Heater 2002). Based on this multidimensional description I suggest that we can best understand cosmopolitanism as both an ethical and a political project. As an ethical project it seeks to establish the extent and content of, and justification for moral obligations concerning the well-being of every individual person. As a political project it is intimately connected with debates about the appropriate form of political community, schemes for legal institutions and procedures, and practices of humanitarian assistance on a global scale. The concept of cosmopolitanism has traditionally been used to contest social and political values, beliefs and practices that privilege moral partiality, national interests and the division of the world into seemingly autonomous state units, and for this reason it has tended to be aspirational – or in the eyes of critics, ‘utopian’ – given the historical dominance of political realism and other varieties of statism. However as the world has become more interconnected and interdependent some scholars have extended the concept beyond its aspirational status and posited the existence of an ‘incipient global polity’ (Scholte 2004, 212). This global polity is not to be confused with a world state or government, but it does suggest the emergence of a realm of organized social and political life in which governance is becoming a transnational phenomenon effectively spreading across borders and being transmitted through various actors at levels from the local to the global. For this reason it may be argued that cosmopolitanism has shifted from being merely desirable to being plausible. In this new global context the first principles provided by cosmopolitan theorists can help us to think about how to collectively formulate and implement policies and norms that are attuned to new forms of responsibility to the global public interest. Furthermore the globalization of political life associated with the emerging global polity moves beyond the sense of greater connectedness between state-based actors identified with liberal (or neoliberal) institutionalism, and embraces the growing engagement with and influence of suprastate, substate and non-state actors. This engagement and influence has transformed traditional understandings of international relations away from exclusivist state-centrism towards a more inclusive conception of the world as an interconnected whole. Cosmopolitanism in its modern form is the systematic articulation of three basic premises (see Pogge 1992, 48). The first is that individual human beings are the ultimate units of moral and political concern. Other entities such as collective groups may also be the subjects of our concern of course, but ultimately it is the 



O’Neill (2000, 186–202) offers a useful discussion of how moral cosmopolitanism should be complemented by what she calls institutional cosmopolitanism. Beitz (1994, 123–36) and Pogge (2002) also make a distinction between moral and institutional cosmopolitanism. See also the essays collected in Ougaard and Higgott (2002). 44

Co smo po l it anism Past and Pr esent individual person who deserves our most basic consideration as a moral being. The second premise, whose modern theoretical articulation is known as universalism, is that all human beings possess equal moral status. Not only are individual persons the ultimate unit of concern, but also no morally relevant distinctions can be made between persons as moral beings. All persons everywhere are equally entitled to the same human status. The third premise is that persons are subjects of concern for everyone; that is, human status has global scope. In other words no one can exempt themselves from their obligations to respect the equal moral status of all other human beings. These three thoughts yield the idea that we owe duties of justice to all the persons of the world, and thus that political morality and practice should focus most fundamentally on the interests or welfare of persons as such. The history of cosmopolitanism has been the attempt to formulate these thoughts both in detail, and in response to the changing forms of human association. The concrete ways in which the cosmopolitan premises should be explained, and the question of which conditions and preconditions are required for their realization have been intensely debated for several centuries. Indeed the early contributions to the discussion go back to ancient Greece. In order to understand cosmopolitanism and its present position in the world one must have an awareness of the most important debates about the meaning of cosmopolitanism, a notion of the core features of cosmopolitanism relevant for today’s world, and an understanding of how various theorists have conceived cosmopolitanism and responded to their predecessors and critics. Each of these elements is addressed in this chapter through a consideration of three significant ‘moments’ in the history of the cosmopolitan tradition: Stoicism, Kantian cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitan democracy.

The Classical Roots of Cosmopolitanism Although cosmopolitanism has received its most serious attention in the years since the end of the Cold War, cosmopolitan thinking can be found as early as the fourth century BCE. It was D iogenes of Sinope (c. 400–323 BCE) who possibly pronounced what has come to be regarded as the most representative statement of the cosmopolitan sensibility. When asked where he came from D iogenes is reputed to have replied: ‘I am a citizen of the world’ (D iogenes Laertius 1925, 65). D iogenes’ sentiment influenced the philosophy not only of fellow Cynics but even more so that of Stoics such as Zeno of Citium (342–270 BCE), Chrysippus of Soloi (c. 280– 207 BCE), Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE), Seneca (c. 4 BCE–65 CE), Epictetus (c. 55–135) and Marcus Aurelius (121–180). Some have suggested that Socrates pre-dates D iogenes as the first prominent classical thinker to consider himself a ‘world citizen’. Montaigne, for instance, wrote:



I employ the term ‘moments’ in light of the essay by Fine and Cohen (2002). 45

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Socrates was asked where he was from. He replied not ‘Athens’, but ‘The World’. He, whose imagination was fuller and more extensive, embraced the universe as his city, and distributed his knowledge, his company, and his affections to all mankind, unlike us who look only at what is underfoot (Montaigne 1958, 116). This might seem an odd claim given that Socrates famously refused to escape punishment of death since voluntary exile from Athens struck him as a violation of his deepest duties of citizenship to the beloved polis. While Socrates and Plato (and later Aristotle) embraced the polis as the ideal form of political community, the Cynics expressed disdain for the conventions of Greek civic life and the corruption of political power disingenuously masked by a calculated appeal to rationality. When D iogenes announced ‘I am a citizen of the world’, for instance, he meant that he belonged both everywhere and nowhere. In declaring independence from wealth, status, luxury, as well as from any particular polis or place, and in mocking the conventions and complacency of existing society, D iogenes portrays the ‘citizen of the world’ as someone who is at home anywhere in the world because each place is simply one place amongst many. D iogenes thus represents a ‘citizen of the world’ or kosmopolitês in a negative sense, as someone who rejects his society and its laws and customs, and who is at home anywhere in the world because his well-being depends solely upon his own freedom and self-mastery. D espite the fact that the founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium, was inspired by the Cynics, the ethical philosophy he initiated regarded the life of virtue as being consistent with both self-mastery and social existence. While the works of Stoics range over an impressively wide area of study including logic, rhetoric and physics, it is in the sphere of ethics that they make their most important and distinctive mark. As with the other major Greek philosophers the attainment of virtue – that is, rational action consonant with human and physical nature – is the chief end of life. Virtue consists in bringing one’s actions into conformity with the general laws and order of the universe. The image of harmony which this position evokes is not coincidental for, in some respects similar to the Cynics, the Stoics regard happiness as the composure and peace of mind that results from a rational self-control that liberates the individual from dependence upon both contingent external circumstances and violent or passionate emotions. Thus an ethically good life is one in which human rationality is made to conform to the rational order of nature. The human capacities for reasoning provide the grounds for fellowship in a world community: Perhaps, though, we should examine more thoroughly what are the natural principles of human fellowship and community. First is something that is seen in the fellowship of the entire human race. For its bonding consists of reason and speech, which reconcile men to one another, through teaching, learning, communicating, debating and making judgements, and unite them in a kind of natural fellowship…. The most widespread fellowship existing among men is that of all with all others (Cicero 1991, 21–2). 46

Co smo po l it anism Past and Pr esent Yet the Stoics did not believe that this theory of virtue justified a withdrawal from public life; to the contrary, it called for measured social and political engagement. This is because human society constitutes an end of the moral duty of the individual. The human capacities for reasoning can only be fully developed within society and the freedom of the individual requires a further harmonization of interests in the community. For this reason law assumes a central role in Stoic doctrine, particularly in the thought of the later Roman Stoics. Law serves the important function of providing a common standard of conduct for all, and it serves as a rational ordering of life to which all can subject themselves. In other words, law operates as a unifying force helping to connect all persons together into a whole, a moral and political community in which all strive for the same end. In this way individual interests are rightly subordinated to the general welfare by means of regulated social relations. Such is the basis of justice. Indeed for Cicero the virtues (or duties) of justice and benevolence are two of the fundamental bonds which keep human society unified under the banner of ‘one eternal and unchanging law’ of nature ‘valid for all nations and all times’ (Cicero 1928, 211). In the tradition of Cicero, Marcus Aurelius asks: If mind is common to us all, then also the reason, whereby we are reasoning beings, is common. If this be so, then also the reason which enjoins what is to be done or left undone is common. If this be so, law also is common; if this be so, we are citizens; if this be so, we are partakers in one constitution; if this be so, the Universe is a kind of Commonwealth. For in what other common government can we say that the whole race of men partakes? And thence, from this common City, is derived our mind itself, our reason and our sense of law, or from what else? (Marcus Aurelius 1990, 24) Because humans are intended to associate with one another in a society regulated by law and justice the Stoics recommend that individuals ought, for the good of themselves and others sharing a common existence, to take part in the political life of society. However, the Stoic conception of the ideal political community surpasses the various limitations associated with existing forms of government, offering a vision of a polity that transcends national borders and is inclusive of all persons. T he kosmopolitês, devoted to the pursuit of the human good, must no doubt find the sphere of the conventional polity to be far too limited and would therefore prefer to think and act in terms of a world community or kosmopolis. In the words of Seneca: Let us take hold of the fact that there are two communities – the one, which is great and truly common, embracing gods and men, in which we look neither to this corner nor to that, but measure the boundaries of our state by the sun; the other, the one to which we have been assigned by the accident of our birth (Seneca 1987, 431).

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Crucially the Stoics did not believe in the mutual exclusion of the local and the world communities, and thought it both possible and desirable for individuals to consider themselves citizens of their local communities as well as citizens of the world. As Martha Nussbaum points out, the Stoics suggested that we think of ourselves as embedded in multiple communities simultaneously, as if surrounded by concentric circles that are drawn closest to oneself and one’s family and then extend outward to include one’s neighbours, one’s compatriots, and ultimately humanity as a whole. ‘To be a citizen of the world’, Nussbaum (1997a, 60) concludes, ‘one does not, the Stoics stress, need to give up local affiliations, which can frequently be a source of great richness in life’. If all humans are as rational beings equal, then all humans together form a single community. Reason and the laws of nature transcend national boundaries to provide a universal order to which all belong as component parts (Marcus Aurelius 1990, 25). In a striking image, Marcus Aurelius compares the world as a single society composed of all human beings and their local communities related together to a ‘highest City’ which forms one community through the relatedness of all its households (Marcus Aurelius 1990, 21). For this reason affirms Plutarch, ‘We should regard all human beings as our fellow citizens and neighbours’ (Nussbaum 1997b, 52). Consequently the Greek prejudice against foreigners exhibited even by Plato and Aristotle was antithetical to the Stoic point of view, since the ideal of world citizenship requires a much more tolerant attitude towards the accident of birth than the exclusive attachments fostered by the narrowly drawn laws and constitution of any particular polis. As Marcus Aurelius declared, ‘Live as on a height; for here or there matters nothing, if everywhere one lives in the Universe, as in a city’ (Marcus Aurelius 1990, 95). The kosmopolitês must regard all other persons as sharing the same nature and moral worth: ‘For no single thing is so like another, so exactly its counterpart, as all of us are to one another’ (Cicero 1928, 329). Even though the Stoics did not offer any specific proposals as to what a world community might look like, they were the first to exhibit a consistent and deliberately cosmopolitan philosophy committed to a universal humanism – a moral sensibility that extended beyond the confines of the polis to encompass all humankind as a whole.

Modernity and Kantian Cosmopolitanism The greatness of the Stoic philosophy consists in its assertion that the whole of humanity forms a single community and therefore that all persons possess a moral status equal to our own. Its weakness arises from the fact that it remained little more than a general ethical world view which failed to offer any concrete conception of the norms, agents and institutions of a global political community. All the same, the influence exerted by Stoic philosophy on subsequent attempts to develop cosmopolitan systems of thought was very great. This influence is particularly apparent in the works of numerous intellectuals identified with the Enlightenment and the emergence of modernity. Indeed, the work of the eighteenth48

Co smo po l it anism Past and Pr esent century philosophes can be rightly regarded as constituting something of a revival of Hellenistic Stoicism’s cosmopolitan ideals. An illuminating example is provided by D enis D iderot’s reception of D avid Hume, the paragon of the Scottish Enlightenment, upon Hume’s arrival in Paris in 1763. Writing to Hume, D iderot noted in praise: ‘My D ear D avid, you belong to all the nations of the earth and you never ask a man for his place of birth. I flatter myself that I am like you, a citizen of the great city of the world’ (Schlereth 1977, 1). D iderot’s self-identification as a cosmopolite or citizen of the world also found expression in his article on ‘cosmopolitain ou cosmopolite’ in the renowned Encyclopédie, where he claims, following Montesquieu: ‘I prefer my family to myself, my country to my family, and the human race to my country’ (ibid., 47). Montesquieu himself stated: ‘If I know of anything advantageous to my family but not to my country, I should try to forget it. If I knew of anything advantageous to my country which was prejudicial to Europe and to the human race, I should look upon it as a crime’ (ibid., 191). Numerous further examples of such cosmopolitan sentiments can be found in the writings of prominent Enlightenment figures, ranging from Francis Bacon to Voltaire, Schiller, Montaigne, Thomas Paine and John Locke. For Paine, champion of the ‘rights of man’, a ‘great nation’ is one ‘which extends and promotes the principles of universal society; whose mind rises above the atmosphere of local thoughts, and considers mankind, of whatever nation or profession they may be, as the work of one creator’ (Paine 1945, 256). While the Enlightenment strain of cosmopolitanism had in many respects a strong affinity with the Stoic tradition, it is with the work of Immanuel Kant that we find the most serious attempt to apply a modern mode of cosmopolitan thought to questions of politics. Kant’s approach to cosmopolitanism is based on a rigorous integration of his moral, legal and political philosophy. Undeniably this unification of the moral, legal and political in Kant’s thought is what elevates the cosmopolitan tradition in the modern era from a basic ethical sensibility to a genuinely global political project. In his account of the nature of civil society Kant follows the general contours of the social contract tradition. While individuals are thought to exist in a prepolitical state of nature this state of nature was not, as with Hobbes, a condition of war per se. It was, however, a situation of insecurity with regard to the rights of the individual and as a matter of justice it was necessary for persons to leave the state of nature and form a society in which there exists a power of public, coercive law. It is through the system of law and its coercive force that individual rights, and of course individual freedom and equality, are effectively recognized and possessed (Kant 1996, 89–90). Furthermore a state or commonwealth is precisely an association of individuals united under a system of public law and thus under the ‘rightful condition’ of justice. Each just state contains three authorities that constitute its ‘general united will’ or basis for government – the legislative, the executive and the judicial – and which are organized according to the principle of the separation 

An excellent treatment of this period of moral and political theorizing is contained in Schlereth (1977). 49

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns of powers (ibid., 90–91). In essence Kant presents the core political principles of the modern ideal of limited constitutional government based on the rule of law, according to which the state is intended to provide the necessary conditions for the realization of individual rights. Kant’s argument goes even further in that he argues that the republican form of government is the most legitimate embodiment of the constitutional state. This is because the republican constitution assumes the freedom of individual citizens as the basis for the exercise of state power and provides for an autonomous rule of law independent of the interests of will of any particular person or class of persons. The key functional element to the republic is a representative system of government within which all individual citizens through their delegates have the opportunity to exercise their right to freedom by participating in the creation and enforcement of the laws of their state (ibid., 112–13). In this way the state acts in the name of the people. The idea of the republican constitution also occupies a central role in one of Kant’s most celebrated political works, Perpetual Peace (1795). In Perpetual Peace Kant argues that states must adopt republican constitutions as a prerequisite for establishing a rule of law to regulate their external relations and thereby replace the international state of nature characterized by conflict with a system of international law leading to a lasting and just peace. Kant presents his argument in the form of a proposed treaty between states consisting of six ‘preliminary’ and three ‘definitive’ articles. In explaining the first definitive article of perpetual peace Kant articulates the three principles that he considered as foundational of the republican constitution: A republican constitution is founded upon three principles: firstly, the principle of freedom for all members of society (as men); secondly, the principle of the dependence of everyone upon a single common legislation (as subjects); and thirdly, the principle of legal equality for everyone (as citizens). It is the only constitution which can be derived from the idea of an original contract, upon which all rightful legislation of a people must be founded. Thus as far as right is concerned, republicanism is in itself the original basis of every kind of civil constitution, and ... it is the only constitution which can lead to perpetual peace (Kant 1991a, 99–100). It is at this point that we begin to approach the cosmopolitan centre of Kant’s moral and political thought. With Perpetual Peace Kant takes aim at the excesses of realism and its emphasis on power and conflict within an enduring condition of anarchy and insecurity. In contrast Kant proposes a system of international justice based upon robust principles of international and cosmopolitan law designed to constrain states’ powers – but not their freedom – in a manner analogous to the normative order of the republican constitution. In an earlier work Kant offered a dramatic description of the failure of international realism to secure lasting peace: Nowhere does human nature appear less admirable than in the relationships which exist between peoples. No state is for a moment secure from the others 50

Co smo po l it anism Past and Pr esent in its independence and its possessions. The will to subjugate the others or to grow at their expense is always present, and the production of armaments for defence, which often makes peace more oppressive and more destructive of internal welfare than war itself, can never be relaxed. And there is no possible way of counteracting this except a state of international right, based upon enforceable public laws to which each state must submit (by analogy with a state of civil or political right among individual men). For a permanent universal peace by means of a so called European balance of power is pure illusion … (Kant 1991b, 91–2). Kant’s principles of international right or justice encompass three overlapping components of public law: municipal or civil law (ius civitatis), international law or the law of nations (ius gentium) and cosmopolitan law (ius cosmopoliticum) (Kant 1991a, 98–9). Each of the three definitive articles of Kant’s proposal for perpetual peace deal, in turn, with these three constituent components of the juridical framework of public law as a whole. The first definitive article, as noted above, stipulates that each state ought to adopt a republican form of civil constitution while the second definitive article instructs that a federation of free states should be formed, so as to secure the rights of each nation. Thus municipal or civil law concerns the internal politics of states as they construct a domestic order consistent with the freedom and equality of their citizens, while the law of nations is the body of international law which regulates the external relations between independent and equal states. Moreover, the law of nations is to culminate in the formation of a treaty-based federation and appropriate international organizations in order to strengthen the cohesion between just states within a sphere of freely agreed upon binding law and institutions of governance. The third definitive article requires the creation of a cosmopolitan law intended to guarantee the right of ‘hospitality’, a ‘universal right of humanity’ to all individuals (ibid., 99–108). Kant’s conception of a federation of free states is not to be confused with advocacy of a world state or world government. This is an important distinction to take note of since cosmopolitans have often, and usually mistakenly, been assumed to be proponents of a world state. Yet cosmopolitanism is not inherently opposed to the state per se or to its modern version in the form of the nation-state. Rather, cosmopolitanism is generally concerned to develop varied modes of governance – from the local to the global – with the goal of facilitating the rights and interests of individuals qua human beings. Indeed states may be one mode of governance well suited to this end, and Kant’s notion of the republic in fact moves well beyond admitting a merely instrumental role for constitutional government in suggesting that such governments are morally necessary for the realization of individual rights and the formalization of systems of justice. Therefore the federation of free states would consist of a progressively expanding international society or ‘league’ of independent states which have nevertheless voluntarily consented to binding constraints on their sovereignty – especially laws prohibiting war – for the good of all nations and peoples therein. This conception of a federation of free states clearly resonates with many of the developments in international law and organizations 51

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns from the last half of the twentieth century and, as detailed in other chapters in this volume, with some of the significant dimensions of global governance associated with processes of globalization. The importance of constraining state power receives additional emphasis with Kant’s notion of cosmopolitan law as that aspect of public law concerned with the status of individuals across international boundaries. In his discussion of the third definitive article Kant explains what the right of universal hospitality means: ... hospitality means the right of a stranger not to be treated with hostility when he arrives on someone else’s territory. He can be turned away, if this can be done without causing his death, but he must not be treated with hostility, so long as he behaves in a peaceable manner in the place he happens to be in … He may only claim a right of resort, for all men are entitled to present themselves in the society of others by virtue of their right to communal possession of the earth’s surface (ibid., 105–6). The right to hospitality amounts to a universal entitlement to travel and attempted entry into the various states of the world but not to settlement, the latter being a limited right dependent upon agreement between specific individuals and states. It is in effect both a natural and legal right that guarantees freedom of movement, social intercourse and commerce between different peoples spread across the commonly shared surface of the globe. ‘In this way’, writes Kant, ‘continents distant from each other can enter into peaceful mutual relations which may eventually be regulated by public laws, thus bring the human race nearer to a cosmopolitan constitution’ (ibid., 106). The cosmopolitan constitution is a body of law that codifies the rights and obligations of all persons and states, and is universally binding while being rooted in our human diversity (Waldron 2000, 242). In this way Kant’s conception of cosmopolitan law embodies the universalism of his moral theory while seeking the formal codification of individuals’ fundamental rights in the face of differences in nationality, ethnicity, social status and religious beliefs. The robustness of Kant’s cosmopolitanism thus clearly reflects his comprehensive integration of the moral, the legal and the political, in demonstrating that respect for human dignity – as expressed in the categorical imperative – ultimately requires both a just domestic sphere and a just world order regulated by international and cosmopolitan law. As a result Kant advances the cosmopolitan vision of a universal community of 

Kant goes on (1991a, 106–7) to condemn unjust practices of international relations, such as European colonial domination, that fail to live up to the standards of cosmopolitan law: ‘If we compare with this ultimate end the inhospitable conduct of the civilized states of our continent, especially the commercial states, the injustice which they display in visiting foreign countries and peoples (which in their case is the same as conquering them) seems appallingly great. America, the negro countries, the Spice Islands, the Cape, etc. were looked upon at the time of their discovery as ownerless territories; for the native inhabitants were counted as nothing … And all this is the work of powers who make endless ado about their piety, and who wish to be considered as chosen believers while they live on the fruits of iniquity.’ 52

Co smo po l it anism Past and Pr esent humankind by building upon the Stoic ethical sensibility and guiding it into the domain of actual political processes and juridical organization.

Globalization and Cosmopolitan Democracy In addition to charting the transformation of cosmopolitanism from Stoicism to Kant, we must also survey ways that the new image of a globalizing world are being theorized as alternative cosmopolitan visions of sociopolitical existence. Recent years have witnessed a worldwide call for democratic reform of international organizations and greater inclusiveness in global governance, partly driven by the alternative globalization movement that has occupied public attention since the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle. Indeed, participation in the creation of government policy that some citizens enjoy in the internal affairs of their respective countries and the accountability provided by democratic elections do not extend similarly to international affairs, leading to widespread concerns about what is referred to as the ‘democratic deficit’ of global governance. In much of the current literature on globalization there is widespread agreement that the existing system of global governance is deficient in many fundamental respects, however there is less consensus as to whether a more legitimate system of governance is possible and as to what normative principles should have an effect on its institutional design (Held and McGrew 2002, 13). The theory of cosmopolitan democracy developed by D avid Held, Jürgen Habermas and others outlines a project for multiple layers of democratized governance (from the local to the global) that, among other goals, attempts to resolve the shortcomings of global governance, in particular the perceived deficit of democratic legitimacy. D aniele Archibugi, an advocate of what he calls ‘cosmopolitical democracy’, explains: Above all, what distinguishes cosmopolitical democracy from other such projects is its attempt to create institutions which enable the voice of individuals to be heard in global affairs, irrespective of their resonance at home. Democracy as a form of global governance thus needs to be realized on three different, interconnected levels: within states, between states and at a world level (Archibugi 2003, 8). For cosmopolitan democrats, global civil society is a central feature of the emergent world society. Global civil society is thought to be an empirical reality on the basis of the tens of thousands of non-state actors engaged in transnational civic activism, including numerous high-profile human rights and environmental NGOs such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace, as well as individuals and activist groups 

Martha Nussbaum (1997b) provides a useful discussion of the influence that Stoicism had on Kant. 53

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns involved in the alternative globalization movement (Kaldor 2003; Keane 2003). Global civil society plays several distinct roles and makes a variety of contributions to developing social and political expectations. Global civil society actors may participate in deliberative and consultative forums, such as international meetings designed to facilitate the formation of international legal regimes and conventions. These global civil society actors may be thought of as representing or defending the views and interests of world society, in contrast to the narrow interests of nation-states and corporations. It might also be argued that global civil society actors contribute a democratic or democratizing impulse to world politics, analogous to the role played by domestic civil society actors within specific countries. For cosmopolitan democrats, the political importance of the new forms of transnational activism and mobilization associated with global civil society is vital to understanding the emancipatory potentials of globalization (Munck 2007). In Held’s (1995, 135) account, globalization is ‘shifting the patterns of powers and constraints which are redefining the architecture of political power associated with the nation-state’. At the international level Held (ibid., 99) discerns significant ‘disjunctures’ between the idea – vital to the current system of global governance – of supreme state sovereignty and the world economy, international organizations, regional and global institutions, international law and military alliances which operate to shape and constrain the options of individual nation-states. For Held, both the autonomy and the sovereignty of the nation-state are being undermined under conditions of globalization by assorted transnational actors and forces. The prerogatives attached to state sovereignty are called into question as these are increasingly being taken up by other non-state actors. Furthermore, Held asserts that the existing system of global governance has failed to provide either sufficient or effective democratic mechanisms of political coordination and change. The Westphalian model with its ‘core commitment to the principle of effective power – that is, the principle that might eventually makes right in the international world’ – and the assertion of the absolute sovereignty of the state is at odds with any possibility for ‘sustained democratic negotiation among members of the international community’ (ibid., 268). In contrast Held (ibid., 88) views the UN as a potential forum for democratic deliberation about pressing international questions but regards it as having so far failed to achieve this capacity due to its lack of credibility as an agency influenced (and most especially funded) to a large extent by the most powerful states. Under these circumstances Held asserts the need for the creation of a global democratic polity and culture, the only framework in which the ideals of autonomy and democracy can be fully realized. The cosmopolitan model of democracy seeks to expand the levels of participatory politics and means of accountability through an adaptive ‘system of diverse and overlapping power centres, shaped and delimited by democratic law’ (ibid., 234). D espite the deficiencies of the existing system of global governance, Held is cautiously optimistic about the prospects for cultivating cosmopolitan democracy. The cosmopolitan project is, then, an attempt to connect the cosmopolitan vision to cosmopolitan institution building (Held 2002, 317).

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Co smo po l it anism Past and Pr esent Hence, the first step towards making the cosmopolitan model of democracy real would be to develop the UN system to live up to its Charter (in which Held finds many cosmopolitan ideals at odds with the current international order), entailing, among other things, implementing ‘key elements of the UN Rights Conventions, enforcing the prohibition of the discretionary right to use force, and activating the collective security system envisaged in the Charter itself’ (Held 1995, 269). More generally the priority is to establish components of what Held (ibid., 227) calls ‘cosmopolitan democratic law’ which is ‘a democratic public law entrenched within and across borders’. The normative foundation of cosmopolitan democratic law is what Held refers to as the ‘principle of autonomy’. This principle requires that all individuals have the ability to participate in political decisions that directly impact upon them (ibid., 147). According to Held the impact of globalization means that the state model no longer suffices to safeguard the autonomy of each individual and, by implication, the functioning of democracy itself. If democracy is to function effectively there needs to be an entrenchment of democratic autonomy and institutions at all levels that impact on the civil, political and social rights of individuals. This entrenchment involves significant restructuring of the state system insofar as the state is not the only site of power affecting the citizen and therefore should not be the only democratically organized institution. Rather there are seven ‘sites of power’ – the body, welfare, culture, civic associations, economy, coercive relations and organized violence, and legal and regulatory institutions – within and across political communities that ‘mould and circumscribe’ people’s life chances and their ability to participate and ‘share in public decision-making’ (ibid., 173). For Held it is imperative that these sites of power, in addition to the state itself, be democratically based, which would require the implementation of democratic procedures and institutions at a number of interconnected levels, from that of the workplace to that of global governance. As a result cosmopolitan democratic law entails a transnational, common political structure founded on the principle of autonomy. This common political structure would incorporate not only existing international law (suitably revised) but also a system of cosmopolitan law which focuses on facilitating and consolidating individual autonomy and not simply interstate relations; both of which would parallel the growth of a global or transnational civil society capable of holding political authority to account and galvanizing social change. Although the concept of cosmopolitan democracy finds empirical support in institutional arrangements such as the UN and international regimes for global governance, the vision reaches beyond existing frameworks. Thinking of democratic autonomy beyond national territorial boundaries forces a reconsideration of the concepts of democracy, legitimacy and representation central to the development of modernity. Cosmopolitan democracy thus prefigures or anticipates a new institutional model for a ‘cosmopolitanizing’ future. By reinvesting the idea of a democratic and just society with a new global significance, cosmopolitan democracy is able to direct the imagination and efforts of different actors towards the creation of a new transnational political order. While the actuality of globalization ‘anchors’ the development of cosmopolitanism, Held suggests, we can ‘reflexively reconstitute’ 55

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns the latter from ‘clear legal, political and civil stepping stones laid down in the twentieth century’ (Held 2003, 181–3). I now want to turn to a related approach that harnesses the concerns of cosmopolitanism to develop a renewed vision of citizenship for a globalizing world. The work of Jürgen Habermas helps us to ‘clearly imagine post-national and cosmopolitan democracy’, which is the first step towards the ‘possibility of implementing’ the idea of cosmopolitanism (Beck and Willms 2004, 201). A central theme in Habermas’s social theory is the emergence of and crucial role played by the public sphere in the development of modern society. One of Habermas’s long-standing concerns has been with permutations that the public sphere has undergone throughout modernity, including its most recent alterations in line with the dynamics of globalization. In his analysis of the differentiation of society into ‘system’ (state and market) and ‘lifeworld’ (experiential background and informal cognitive horizon), Habermas (1987) argues that the public sphere has been increasingly mediated or ‘colonized’ by the system, threatening its creative and critical potentials. In response, he suggests that the progressive rationalization of the lifeworld involves developing a reflexive relationship with modernist conceptions of self and society, as well as expansion of the institutional aspects of the lifeworld by means of the legal and customary inclusion of civil society within democratic debates and procedures (Habermas 1996, 81). Civil society, in other words, is interposed between lifeworld and system as the locus within which citizens can contest the existing order on the basis of new social imaginaries. The institutionalization of the lifeworld thereby contributes to the development of the public sphere in which the collective exercise of critique and publicity is possible (Habermas 1992). This approach emphasizes the formation of new social and cultural practices, identities and solidarities as the public sphere opens up from the national to the global. An essential component of the Habermasian project is to revitalize the category of citizenship that has ‘shaped the self-understanding of modernity’ in line with the emergent ‘postnational’ vision of our globalizing world (Habermas 2001, 83). As with Held, Habermas’s reflection on the procedures for moving towards a more cosmopolitan world is based on the phenomenon of global interdependence and the inadequacy of the nation-state to address issues and problems that arise from global interconnectedness. In order to politically ‘govern’ globalization, political actors must equip themselves with new legitimized and functional institutional structures that exceed the limited horizons of the nation-state. The modern state, Habermas (ibid., 62–8) notes, assumed its form through the combination of four elements: (1) the administrative and fiscal element which ensured legal formality and stability through positive law; (2) the territorial element, which demarcated geographical boundaries, constructed community on the basis of autonomy and self-government, and defined foreign policy; (3) the national element, which symbolically represented the people and the goal of civic solidarity; and (4) the social and democratic element, which realized the democratic will of the people as well as access to social welfare and political participation via citizenship. Globalization has, however, called into question the national constellation of modernity, giving rise to 56

Co smo po l it anism Past and Pr esent various dilemmas regarding the efficacy of the nation-state and the legitimacy of the democratic process itself (ibid., 68–80; 2006b, 176–8). What then is the way forward out of the dilemmas into which ‘the growing interdependencies of social arenas, communities of risk, and the networks of shared fate’ (Habermas 2001, 55) have thrown the modern state? According to Habermas, the solution lies in the design and implementation of ‘intermediate’ cosmopolitan institutions, such as federations of previously autonomous sovereign states, within a multilevel global system that includes supranational governance in the form of a modified and empowered UN. The central problem facing such institutions – which Habermas (2006b, 135–8) insists must be conceived in terms of a ‘global domestic politics’, or cosmopolitanization from within nation-states, and not a world state – is that of popular legitimacy: simply globalizing the welfare state in order to save it from oblivion is inadequate to generate and maintain the legitimacy of democratic institutions. Envisioning legitimate transnational democracy means, in part, reversing first modernity’s serial ordering that placed popular sovereignty first and human rights second as the sources of political legitimacy. This is because human rights make possible the exercise of popular sovereignty by establishing legitimate rules of law that guarantee life, liberty and respect for communicative freedom regardless of the outcomes of democratic procedures (Habermas 1998, 258–60). Human rights thus occupy a special position at the international level, inasmuch as they serve as the enabling conditions upon which postnational democracies can be legitimated. Habermas argues that the process of European integration might serve as an example of cosmopolitanization. While focusing on the European context, Habermas contends that the postnational character of this project makes it suitable for addressing global issues in a broader perspective. Thus European federalism per se should not be regarded as the telos or completion of cosmopolitanism, but as an experimental response to the anachronism of state sovereignty that defines modern international politics. As a political experiment, the European Union provides the prospect of formulating answers to various administrative, territorial and social justice problems that cannot be resolved within the framework of methodological and political nationalism. European-wide common policy is potentially more effective than independent state-based policy in the management of international affairs, the establishment of criteria to address global problems, and the promotion of social inclusion (Habermas 2006b, 67–74). Nevertheless, a European federation cannot speak and act decisively on behalf of all actors in the global arena. To be democratic, inclusive, and legitimate, the political governance of globalization must eventually involve all peoples of the world through the integration of regionally differentiated political federations. European federalism obviously is a limited conception of the ‘cosmopolitan condition’, yet it provides a model for how this vision can be gradually implemented by redesigning sovereign states, citizenship, and modes of democratic decision-making within regional political integration (ibid., 177). In other words, the EU indicates the real possibility of refashioning the social and the political ‘beyond’ the nation-state.

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Habermas (1998, 28) also proposes a broader theory of cosmopolitan justice – of ‘equal respect and solidaristic responsibility for everyone’ – that seeks to embrace the entire globe and thus globalization in its maximum extension. Habermas’s theory of cosmopolitan globalization is grounded on the intrinsic relation between individuals, human rights and just and legitimate institutions, irrespective of the ‘really existing’ political configurations that historically have determined the balance of power and relations of force between nation-states. In this way, Habermas’s theory eliminates the constraints of political realism and radically rethinks the role of the individual and the state by making human rights the precondition for the legitimacy of political institutions and government. The key issue for Habermas (2006b, 24) is that membership in the ‘inclusive moral community’ envisioned by cosmopolitanism, is ‘open to all’ and ‘promises not only solidarity and nondiscriminatory inclusion, but at the same time the equal right of everybody to the protection of their individuality and otherness’. Habermas’s theory of cosmopolitan justice is developed in light of Kant’s Perpetual Peace. While diverging from Kant on several points, Habermas endorses the essential ambition of Kant’s project: that cosmopolitan law, specified by the global recognition and protection of human rights, is an entitlement of every individual and is the foundation for a ‘decentred’ world democratic procedure by which a global and legitimate mode of governance can be constructed. Habermas’s cosmopolitanism assigns to each individual a comprehensive list of human rights, through which each person can assume the status of world citizen. This is because the point of cosmopolitan law is ‘that it goes over the heads of the collective subjects of international law to give legal status to the individual subjects and justifies their unmediated membership in the association of free and equal world citizens’ (Habermas 1997, 128). While the long-term aim of cosmopolitanism, as Habermas sees it, is to convert all existing states to democratic constitutional polities within interlinked regional federations, a more immediate objective is to reinforce the progressive expansion of global governance through reformation of the UN. While states may remain semi-autonomous in terms of their territorial boundaries, the idea of global domestic politics suggests the transformation of divergent foreign policies into a common platform of shared policies internally mediated through a supranational body, such as the UN or EU (Habermas 2006b, 132–8). Yet important transitional measures are called for, such as establishing robust transnational democratic procedures; guaranteeing the political status of all citizens of the world through a world parliament (which would provide greater democratic legitimacy within and between each state as well as validate the principles of reciprocity, publicity and opinion- and will-formation necessary for a global civic consciousness); and promulgating equitable and transparent global market regulations in order to rectify economic stratification induced and reinforced by unfettered neoliberal globalization (ibid., 173–93). By gradually eroding the entrenched political distinction between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, global domestic politics can facilitate unification of the world’s citizens through civic solidarity borne of the universalism of human rights and a cosmopolitan awareness of the shared fate of globally interconnected communities. 58

Co smo po l it anism Past and Pr esent

Conclusion Cosmopolitanism means ‘world citizenship’ and implies belonging on the part of all individuals in a universal community of human beings as moral persons. A more precise definition is somewhat difficult to formulate because, as this chapter has attempted to show, cosmopolitanism is a dynamic concept that has acquired different nuances and emphases over the course of time. Much of this dynamism comes from changes in society – from the classical polis to the forces of globalization – as well as from the different interpretations by theorists of the consequences of those changes for the cosmopolitan tradition of moral and political thought. Theories of cosmopolitanism can take various forms, including natural law and human rights moral cosmopolitanism, rule of international law and global governance political or institutional cosmopolitanism, as well as ‘embedded’ (Erskine 2008), ‘rooted’ (Appiah 2007) and ‘subaltern’ (Santos 2002) cosmopolitanisms which emphasize negotiating cultural diversity and universalism without treating them as mutually exclusive (Kleingeld 1999). Cosmopolitan theories can also come in thick or thin versions, depending on the comprehensiveness of the theory or the demandingness of the duties it supposes we have towards ‘strangers’ (Held 2005, 17; Scheffler 2001, 111–30). With the different ways of emphasizing cosmopolitan principles and the complexity of national interests, and the implications of global political transformation, it is not surprising that the meaning of cosmopolitanism continues to be the subject of often intense debate. Robert Keohane (2003, 153) argues that cosmopolitan democracy ‘is a distant ideal, not a feasible option for our time’. Keohane is partly right; cosmopolitan democracy – or cosmopolitanism more broadly – as such does not exist as yet. Given existing power structures and the continuing reliance upon state sovereignty within the international system, there is no doubt that cosmopolitan values and institutions are extremely difficult to implement. Nonetheless, the feasibility of cosmopolitanism is a much more open question than Keohane admits. Increasing global integration, substantial developments in global governance, the growth and empowerment of non-governmental civil society actors, and the continuing experimentation with European integration all point to mounting expectations that globalization ‘without cosmopolitanism could fail’ (Held 2003, 182). For many, it would appear that ‘cosmopolitanism is a less utopian project than that set out by the theory of the modern state at the time of Hobbes’s Leviathan’ (ibid., 183). Keohane is only partly right, then. The question of cosmopolitanism is not exhausted by weighing up its present feasibility. All sociopolitical transformations, all fundamental reconfigurations of polity, identity and citizenship, are driven not merely by matters of feasibility but, perhaps even more significantly, by processes of the creative imaginary: politics is less the ‘art of the possible’ than it is the art of what we imagine to be possible. It is through the ‘political imagination’, William Connolly (1995, xxx) notes, that ‘contemporary possibilities and impossibilities are delineated’. Hence the normative and ethical power of the cosmopolitan vision is just as integral to acting politically here and now as it is to thinking about alternative political futures. While Keohane equates ‘distant ideal’ with ‘unfeasible’, we cannot 59

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns even begin to imagine what may be possible without the political impetus of a cosmopolitan ideal to nourish our hopes and dreams for a better world in which we ‘regard nothing human as alien’ (Waldron 2000, 243).

References Appiah, K.A. (2007), Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: Norton). Archibugi, D . (2003), ‘Cosmopolitical D emocracy’, in Archibugi, D . (ed.), Debating Cosmopolitics (London: Verso). Barry, B. (1999), ‘Statism and Nationalism: A Cosmopolitan Critique’, in Shapiro, I., and Brilmayer, L. (eds), Global Justice (New York: New York University Press). Beck, U., and Willms, J. (2004), Conversations with Ulrich Beck (Cambridge: Polity). Beitz, C. (1994), ‘Cosmopolitan Liberalism and the States System’, in Brown, C. (ed.), Political Restructuring in Europe: Ethical Perspectives (London: Routledge). Benhabib, S. (2004), The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Bohman, J., and Lutz-Bachmann, M. (eds) (1997), Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Cicero (1928), The Republic (De Re Publica) (London: William Heinemann). — (1991), On Duties (De Officiis) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Connolly, W. (1995), The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). D iogenes Laertius (1925), Lives of Eminent Philosophers: Volume II (London: William Heinemann). Erskine, T. (2008), Embedded Cosmopolitanism: Duties to Strangers and Enemies in a World of ‘Dislocated Communities’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fine, R., and Cohen, R. (2002), ‘Four Cosmopolitan Moments’, in Vertovec, S., and Cohen, R. (eds), Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Habermas, J. (1987), The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume II – Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (Cambridge: Polity). — (1992), ‘Further Reflections on the Public Sphere’, in Calhoun, C. (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). — (1996), Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). — (1997), ‘Kant’s Idea of Perpetual Peace, with the Benefit of Two Hundred Years’ Hindsight’, in Bohman, J., and Lutz-Bachmann, M. (eds). — (1998), The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity). — (2001), The Postnational Constellation (Cambridge: Polity). — (2006a), Time of Transitions (Cambridge: Polity). — (2006b), The Divided West (Cambridge: Polity). 60

Co smo po l it anism Past and Pr esent Heater, D . (2002), World Citizenship: Cosmopolitan Thinking and its Opponents (London and New York: Continuum). Held, D . (1995), Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity). — (2002), ‘Cosmopolitanism: Ideas, Realities and D eficits’, in Held, D ., and McGrew, A. (eds), Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance (Cambridge: Polity). — (2003), ‘From Executive to Cosmopolitan Multilateralism’, in Held, D ., and Koenig-Archibugi, M. (eds). — (2005), ‘Principles of Cosmopolitan Order’, in Brock, G., and Brighouse, H. (eds), The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Held, D ., and Koenig-Archibugi, M. (eds) (2003), Taming Globalization: Frontiers of Governance (Cambridge: Polity). Held, D ., and McGrew, A. (2002), ‘The Great Globalization D ebate: An Introduction’, in Held, D ., and McGrew, A. (eds), The Global Transformations Reader (Cambridge: Polity). Kaldor, M. (2003), Global Civil Society: An Answer to War (Cambridge: Polity). Kant, I. (1991a), ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’, in Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). — (1991b), ‘On the Common Saying: “This May be True in Theory, but it does not Apply in Practice”’, in Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). — (1996), The Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Keane, J. (2003), Global Civil Society? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Keohane, R. (2003), ‘Global Governance and Accountability’, in Held, D ., and Koenig-Archibugi (eds). Kleingeld, P. (1999), ‘Six Varieties of Cosmopolitanism in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany’, Journal of the History of Ideas 60:1, 505–24. Marcus Aurelius (1990), The Meditations (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press). Montaigne, M. de (1958), The Complete Works of Montaigne (London: Hamish Hamilton). Munck, R. (2007), Globalization and Contestation (New York and London: Routledge). Nussbaum, M. (1997a), Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). — (1997b), ‘Kant and Cosmopolitanism’, in Bohman, J., and Lutz-Bachman, M. (eds). O’Neill, O. (2000), Bounds of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Ougaard, M., and Higgott, R.A. (eds) (2002), Towards a Global Polity (London: Routledge). Paine, T. (1945), ‘Letter to Abbé Raynal’, in The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine (New York: The Citadel Press). Pogge, T. (1992), ‘Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty’, Ethics 103:1, 48–75. 61

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns — (2002), World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity). Santos, B.S. (2002), Toward a New Legal Common Sense (London: Butterworth). Scheffler, S. (2001), Boundaries and Allegiances (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Schlereth, T.J. (1977), The Cosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment Thought (Notre D ame and London: University of Notre D ame Press). Scholte, J. A. (2004), ‘Civil Society and D emocratically Accountable Global Governance’, Government and Opposition 39:2, 211–33. Seneca (1987), On Leisure (De Otio), in Long, A.A., and Sedley, D .N. (eds), The Hellenistic Philosophers: Volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Waldron, J. (2000), ‘What is Cosmopolitan?’, Journal of Political Philosophy 8:2, 227– 43.

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4 Critical Theory, Marxism and International Ethics Steven C. Roach

‘Critical theory’ was first coined in 1937 by the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research or the ‘Frankfurt School’. It represents a rich synthesis of social and liberal theory (Kant, Hegel, Marx and Weber) and today encompasses a wide range of contemporary radical perspectives, including poststructuralism, feminism and communicative action theory. While some have referred to critical theory as a so-called ‘second stage of Marxism’, Frankfurt School critical theory has been criticised for lacking a coherent and systematic structure. Although this lack has allowed critical theory to serve as a pliable, self-reflective alternative to positivist approaches, it also underscores critical theory’s abstract and highly obscure orientation. The obscurity of critical theory, however, serves an important purpose: it helps to ensure that the ideas and research of critical theory do not turn into the political tools for ascertaining facts and asserting political authority. On the one hand, then, this self-awareness (of critical theorists’ place in the political spectrum) constitutes a concerted attempt to expose the hidden sources of societal reification; that is, how ideas and policies regarding social and political power convey an immediacy (of perception) that results in control and manipulation of the masses. On the other hand, the boundless negativity of this approach poses considerable challenges for those wishing to posit (affirm) an ethics that can guide and energise our rational understanding of social action at the domestic and international level. This is one of the principal reasons that we distinguish between first- and second-generation Frankfurt School theorists; and why the writings of Jürgen Habermas, the most notable of the second-generation theorists, remains crucial to devising a pragmatic framework of social action and global ethics (via linguistics and law).

  

Andrew Arato, for instance, refers to the Frankfurt School’s extension of Marxism as a so-called ‘second stage of Marxism’ (Arato and Gebhardt 1993, 6). For a discussion of this point, see Bronner (2002). On this point of distinguishing between generations, see Martin Jay (1971).

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns As we shall see, many critical theorists of international relations draw on Habermas’s communicative action theory to theorise about the role of discursive ethics and reasoned argumentation in international negotiations and arrangements. Some have formulated sophisticated, moral cosmopolitan approaches to confront the politics of globalisation and to reflect upon the emerging parameters of global citizenship and justice (Held 1995; Linklater 1998; see Hayden and el-Ojeili 2006, 6–8). However, the theme of global ethics has also highlighted the tension between critical theorists of globalisation and orthodox social theorists. Critics of the former claim that Habermas has all but abandoned the central, guiding tenets of historical materialism, and that the limits of globalisation theory require the re-examination of the spatial and temporal dimensions of globalisation (Rosenberg 2000). What this critique suggests is that we have yet to adequately justify the ethical precepts and moral norms of global institutional frameworks vis-à-vis the internationalism of Marxism. This places critical theory in a rather difficult predicament. For if Frankfurt School critical theory is the source of social knowledge and emancipation, then it must also seek to avoid the reification that it criticises. The ethical challenge facing international theorists, then, underscores two important goals: to remain socially relevant without being overly fashionable; and to formulate an understanding of the social transformations of the global age that can reflect the self-reflective extension of ethical thought. D iscursive ethics certainly help to meet and address this ethical challenge. Yet in doing so, they also raise some questions and difficulties, which I shall address in the final section. In this chapter, I shall examine the following four motifs of Marxism and Frankfurt School critical theory: alienation/marginalisation, reification, discursive ethics and the social dimensions of global ethics. In the first part, I elaborate on the themes of alienation and fetishism (as a form of reification) and examine some of the tensions within Marxism. I then move on in the second section to address the central tenets of Frankfurt School critical theory, including the firstgeneration concepts of reification and negative dialectical thought, and Habermas’s communicative action theory. Finally, in the third section, I turn attention to critical theory in international relations or critical international relations theory. Here I shall address the critical dialogue within and between neo-Gramscianism and radical cosmopolitan approaches, and discuss some of the challenges to understanding international ethics.

Marxism Karl Marx (1818–83) arguably remains the most important foundational thinker of the critical theory tradition. As the third child in a middle-class Jewish family, Marx studied law at the University of Bonn, where he would later write his dissertation entitled The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature. The decision to focus on D emocritus’s materialism and Aristotle’s physis (nature) reflected Marx’s early attempts to formulate a materialised dialectic. Such a dialectic, 64

Cr it ic al Th eo r y, Mar xism and Int er nat io nal Et h ic s while addressing the evolutionary traits of nature, sought principally to refashion Hegel’s grand dialectic (Aufhebung) in which history unfolded into moments of higher consciousness of one’s freedom as one’s own (Hegel 1967). Equally important as a source of Marx’s ideas was his break with Young Hegelianism, a radical intellectual movement that featured such seminal thinkers as Moses Hess, Max Stirner and Bruno Bauer. One of the key issues addressed by this movement was whether the spiritual forces or religion could still be considered the driving force of history (as Hegel had envisioned it in his lectures on the spirit of history). The more conservative Young Hegelians argued for the compatibility of reason and religion that would reinforce the liberal bourgeois state. In The Essence of Christianity, Lüdwig Feuerbach (1989, 189), for instance, argued that man’s imperfections were unique to his species in general. For him, the essence of man was the infinite joy that came with being conscious of oneself as the object of God’s graces. Religion in this sense objectivised the human consciousness by providing a source of feeling that was needed to overcome the narrow tendencies or limitations associated with the human species (such as pride and glory). Marx, however, largely dismissed these religious underpinnings of materialist thought, arguing that the essence of man was what he or she produced. His famous dictum that ‘religion is the opium of the masses’ suggested that religion had no place in the substratum of the workers’ consciousness (of their own needs). Indeed, much like the state, religion remained a (culture) tool of the bourgeois class to oppress the proletariat (workers). It thus induces the proletariat to participate passively and pre-consciously in their oppression, while at the same time deflecting attention away from the more crucial objective: the active promotion of a unified, workers’ consciousness (Marx 1964).

Alienation and Fetishism Marx expressed these material elements/divisions in terms of worker-(self) alienation or the worker’s separation from the production process. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx states that, ‘Capital is a collective product and only by the united action of all members of society … is a social power’ (1978, 485). In his view, the bourgeoisie used its ownership of the means of production (property, capital, interest and rent) to isolate or marginalise the proletariat from what he produced. More often that not this involved lost compensation (surplus value) or wages work, which Marx referred to in terms of relative and absolute surplus value. According to Marx, the only way to emancipate the worker was to dissolve collectively the very class arrangement that allowed the bourgeoisie to exploit the worker. ‘Communism’, as he states, ‘deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society: all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation’ (1978, 486).



For a discussion of this movement, see Löwith (1964). 65

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Nonetheless, while the Marx of the 1840s focused on the alienation of the production process, the older, more mature Marx turned to scientific thought to formulate his systematic critique of capitalism. In Capital, Marx distinguished between the use value of labor – ‘production activity of definite kind and exercised with a definite aim’ (1978, 309) – and exchange value, to explain the relationship between surplus value and the fetish of commodities. For Marx, neither value explained the actual production of the commodity. As Marx explains: Labour power exists only as a capacity, or power of the living individual. Given the individual, production of labour-power consists in his reproduction of himself or his maintenance … labour power, however, becomes a reality only its exercise; it sets itself in action only by working … Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is. It is value, rather, that converts every product into social hieroglyph. Later on, we try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social products as language (1978, 322). As this passage suggests, Marx’s social theory is based on the principal idea that value/wealth is produced not from the power of labour, but from the monetary properties of commodities. Although Marx did not use the term reification, his idea of fetishisation of commodities anticipated its meaning by focusing on the intrinsic relationship between money and value(s). With the Frankfurt School, as we shall see, reification represented the manipulation of cultural symbols: the capacity of elites to use their social position to reproduce artistic forms, social beliefs, and values. Yet in Marx’s writings, culture would play a markedly diminished role. Nowhere was this more evident than with the role of national culture. It would perhaps be remiss to say that Marx sought to oppose tout court the constitutive role of national culture. His changing position on the Irish question (the struggle against British domination), for example, suggests that federalism or cultural autonomy could resolve the Irish question. Lenin would later build on this view by advocating what he called ‘tactical right of workers’, a right that would ultimately become an important focal point of debate in the Second International (1889–1914). In particular, the issue pitted the leading Austro-Marxists during the early twentieth century, namely Otto Bauer and Carl Renner who argued that the proletariat was entitled to a right to cultural autonomy, and Lenin himself who contended that all workers nations possessed an equal right to secession (Roach 2005). In his Critical Remarks on the National Question (1916), for instance, Lenin claimed that the tactical alliances between workers and the local/national bourgeoisie were necessary to promote the right to self-determination of all oppressed nations of workers. Culture in the context of the Marxist national question exposed both the strategic victory of Lenin and also the tensions within Marx’s own views concerning culture and right. As we shall see, however, it would raise the question of whether the orthodoxy of Marxism (as the single, systematic theory of capitalism) could address the changing social conditions of the twentieth century, especially the rise of totalitarianism.

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Frankfurt School Critical Theory Western Marxism, which featured the contributions of Georg Lukàcs, Karl Korsch and Antonio Gramsci, was one of the first intellectual movements to break with or to criticise Lenin’s victory and the state of Marxist Leninism in the early 1920s. More than anything, the movement constituted a vital link between the first-generation theorists of the Frankfurt School and Marxism. Lukàcs’s return to Hegelianism, for instance, posited that orthodox Marxism had relied on the inert immediacy of facts to validate its laws and concepts. Here Lukàcs sought to relate these facts to a broader, more dynamic understanding of society as a whole. Much like Lukàcs, Gramsci sought to revise Marxism by demonstrating that civil society, rather than being subordinate to the state, was in fact autonomous from the state. His solution to class/cultural conflict or the dialectical tensions between the state and civil society was to formulate a counter-hegemonic civil society (historical bloc). The Frankfurt School critical theory built upon these ideas by theorising about the themes of political and social oppression, in particular, totalitarianism and consumerism. The three most noted thinkers, Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, understood that power of technical or instrumental reason constituted a distinctive feature of twentieth-century society, and that the totalitarian state (Nazism) represented its most virulent political form (ideological). An equally oppressive form of instrumental logic was consumerism, or the manipulation of cultural life and values by the so-called ‘culture industry’. In these two contexts, instrumental logic and reason had subverted the political consciousness. The purpose of critical theory, then, was to expose the reification of societal relations; that is, to examine the social genesis of facts and the ideological dynamics of political structures. In his essay ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’, for instance, Horkheimer argued that positivist science, which treated facts and values as separate, was based on a false objectivism that obscured the social content of facts and ideas. This would be a theme that would later inform Horkheimer and Adorno’s work, Dialectic of Enlightenment, and their rejection of the liberating potential of the Enlightenment principles of freedom and rationality. By championing the negativity of dialectical thought, Adorno and Horkheimer believed that they were exposing the totalising elements of instrumental reason. Whether there was a constructive lesson to be learned here, however, was never quite clear. As already suggested, Adorno was never a self-proclaimed political thinker; nor did he wish others to appropriate his own ideas. This might explain why he and Horkheimer preferred to expose the totalising elements of society without offering an alternative that could unite theory with social action. Ultimately, their negativised critique raised the following question: how were the oppressed to resist the status quo power that had fully colonised their own consciousness? Habermas’s answer to this question was to resituate reason in an intersubjective, communicative framework. For him, to recover the lost, critical elements of reason was to uncover its cognitive dimension, communicative reason. In his view, when we struggle to reach mutual consensus, we also apply or draw from our existing cultural understandings of the world. These cultural understandings exist prior 67

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns to, and are communicated through, our exchange of ideas, thereby reflecting a repository of cultural understandings. Habermas refers to this repository as ‘lifeworld’: a holistic and creative social force that is constantly shaping our views and determining how we rationalise. This rationalisation process can take many forms, but generally, it reflects the differentiation of systems functioning or the implementation, enforcement and reproduction of rules, norms and principles through institutions and political structures. When existing social institutions or mechanisms fail to respond to our interests and needs, it unleashes novel social forces and pressures, such as well-organised activist movements and protests. By the early 1990s, Habermas would begin to devote much of his attention to the political and economic processes of EU integration (adoption of a single European currency or Central Monetary Unit). In so doing, his unstated aim was to apply communicative action theory to EU integration; that is, to situate it in the constitutionalisation of EU law. Two of the central themes of this process were legitimisation and constitutional patriotism. In his essay on ‘Citizenship and National Identity’, Habermas (1996) argued that immigration and economic globalisation had begun to challenge the constitutional patriotism of national polities. The erosion of national identity raised the question of whether the political loyalties of domestic polities could provide the basis for solidarity at the transnational level. In his later writings on the EU constitution, Habermas would argue that an EU constitution – one modeled after the framework of the US constitution – could foster the needed solidarity and identity to promote an EU polity. In Between Facts and Norms, for instance, Habermas analyses one of the fundamental components of a democratic polity: the legitimisation process of the constitutional state. Here he explains how democratic constitutions and participation consists of both a ‘legally mediated solidarity’ and ‘secular source of citizenship’. As he puts it: Each and every person should receive a three-fold recognition: they should receive equal protection and equal respect in their integrity as irreplaceable individuals, as members of the political community. This idea of selfdetermining political community has assumed a variety of concrete legal forms in the different constitutions and political systems of Western Europe and the United States (ibid., 496). Still, Habermas’s recent political writings on Kosovo and Iraq reveal a rather strong ambivalence towards the emergence of a global civil society. On the one hand, globalisation has engendered many benefits and opportunities for social movements and citizens to channel their demands to higher political authorities. On the other hand, the political and legal institutions of the global community, while forming a novel network of global justice, still lack developed legitimisation processes to foster the needed loyalties and commitments for global citizenship. It is crucial to stress here that Habermas’s ambivalence stems from his own convictions concerning the strong nationalist loyalties to the constitutional state. As already noted, constitutional patriotism, or the evolution of loyalties of national citizens 68

Cr it ic al Th eo r y, Mar xism and Int er nat io nal Et h ic s to their constitutional frameworks, has not materialised into any strong form at the global level (and to lesser extent the transnational level, such as the EU). The development of global citizenship takes time, of course, and requires stronger enforcement mechanisms to interlink democratic procedures with democratic solidarity. For cosmopolitan nationalists, this idea requires moral cosmopolitans to take more seriously the dynamics of national communities when formulating the possibilities of increasing solidarity at the global level (Eckersley 2008) Habermas’s ambivalence thus reflects a rather interesting divide within Habermasian-based IR theory, namely, between pragmatic and radical interpretations of world politics and ethics (more on the latter in the next section). Thomas Risse, for instance, argues that communicative action theory explains how international agreements and institutional norms are shaped by reasoned argumentation (Risse 2000). Communicative action in world politics, as he explains, involves empathy and ethical and moral claims which in turn, constitute a common knowledge (or anarchy as lifeworld) of state actors that helps to explain behavioral outcomes. In this manner, strategy/power offers one mode of explanation, while reasoned argumentation offers another to assess these outcomes. Risse’s application of Habermas’s theory, while effective in applying Habermas’s ideas to international politics, raises a larger theoretical issue: how does the application of critical theory to world politics introduce tensions within the study of world politics? D o normative and ethical approaches bridge or widen the gap between structural Marxist approaches and cosmopolitan approaches in global politics?

Counter-Hegemony and Global Ethics One answer to these above questions is that in the absence of central world government, the global realm relies primarily on duty, voluntary obligation and responsibility, or rather the commitment to upholding norms, even when this commitment comes into conflict with state sovereignty. This is one reason that Kant’s cosmopolitan and ethical writings can be said to exercise such considerable influence on cosmopolitan thinkers in IR, including Habermas. It might also explain the apparent divergence between global ethics and international political economy perspectives that study economic trade, capital flows and global security. As we shall see, in critical IR theory, Gramsci and Habermas remain two of the most influential foundational critical theorists. Their ideas form the basis of socalled neo-Gramscian and Habermasian-based approaches in critical IR theory.

Neo-Gramscianism Neo-Gramscian IR theorists include Robert Cox, Stephen Gill, Craig Murphy and Mark Rupert, among others. Cox is largely credited with initiating the extension of Gramsci’s categories into international relations theory (1981; 1983). In thematising 69

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns the internationalisation of the state, Cox distinguished between a ‘problem-solving’ and a ‘critical theory’ approach in IR and sought to offer an alternative to scientific realist (positivist) explanations of hegemony. This distinction was intended to shed theoretical light on the fluid nature of the political structures and organisations in the international realm and the role consent in the (dialectical) operations of these organisations. As he states: One must beware of ignoring the principle of dialectic by overemphasizing the power and coherence of structure, even a very dominant one. Where a structure is manifestly dominant, critical theory leads one to look for a counter-structure, even a latent one, by seeking out its possible bases of support and elements of cohesion (1981, 35). Here ‘counter-structures’ refer to social movements and the alliances between nonstate actors, and are designed to counter the privileges and undue influence of international elites. As already noted, Gramsci conceived of this process in terms of the passive revolution, or rather the adoption of norms and rights that are designed to pacify the revolutionary sentiment of the masses. Capitalist elites, he argued, could extend their control over civil society by implementing new civil and political rights legislation. This policy of pacification effectively politicised civil society (political society) and undermined the relative autonomy of civil society. In order to resist such hegemonic control and to ensure that civil society served the interests of the workers and peasants, Gramsci believed that the oppressed masses needed to form a counter-hegemonic civil society. In this respect, a counter-hegemonic civil society at the global level refers to historical blocs capable of resisting the hegemonic interests of the leading member states of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the G8. According to Gill (1993; 1995), counter-hegemonic civil society blocs involve the activities of non-state actors, social, environmental and grassroots movements, whose protest activities and organisational skills help to shape global policy (for example, indigenous rights or unfair trading practices). Here Gill draws on Gramsci to conceive of the openended tensions between consent/legitimacy and coercion (Gill 1993, 55). As he states: ‘for ethical hegemony to be possible, the state must necessarily be constituted by general legitimacy and active consent, which implies the inclusion of the interests of the subordinate elements within the system’ (ibid., 69). For Gill, legitimacy is what secures ‘active’ consent, whether this refers to the coercive tactics used by the most powerful states or the increasing participation in institutions that allows developing states to shape the economic agenda. Such consent also represents a dynamic element of what he calls the ‘new constitutionalism’. As Gill explains: There is a growing contradiction between the tendency towards the globality and universality of capital in the neoliberal form and the particularity of the legitimation and enforcement of its key exploitative relations by the state … one of the main tasks of political economy today is to understand and theorise

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Cr it ic al Th eo r y, Mar xism and Int er nat io nal Et h ic s the possibilities for the transformation of these dimensions of world order, in the context of consciousness, cultural and material life (1995, 422). From a neo-Gramscian perspective, legitimacy has become an effective tool for controlling participation levels through norm and rule efficacy, the global extension of the rule of law, and enhanced representation. Critics of neo-Gramscianism, however, argue that the extension of Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and state and civil obscures the meaning of Gramsci’s domestic level concepts. NeoGramscians, in these critics’ view, fail to adequately engage Gramsci’s categories, or fully appreciate the problematic application of his ideas and categories at the global level. As Randall Germain and Michael Kenny insist: For Gramsci … the link between hegemony and consent runs directly through the terrain of civil society. Yet it is not at all clear what if any Gramsci would attribute to the domain of civil society if it could be represented through the imagery of the nation nor considered in relation to the state (1998, 14). But if the ‘global’ only applies to civil society, and not to the state, then how do we establish and ascertain the independence and effectiveness of the ‘global’ civil society. After all, globalisation has eroded state sovereignty and has been responsible for an increasing number of failed states. D oes the state’s ineffectiveness in regulating the affairs of society also ensure the ineffectiveness of civil society? Concerning this idea, Anne Showstack Sassoon states: An effective civil society requires an effective state, and with this relationship comes the ethical and strategic goal of creating or recreating democratic binds between politics and people … reconceptualising and putting the state back in and focusing on the processes underway in civil society, and in political systems which provide the basis for transforming politics in the sense of shaping and managing change to enhance rather than frustrate pluralism and democracy, are fundamental in creating a democratic social and political global environment (2005, 45). I believe that putting the state ‘back in’ might well resolve some of conceptual difficulties of neo-Gramscianism, including the need to work more judiciously from the state to the global level. But, as Sassoon suggests, the transformative elements of the global civil society must reflect new global opportunities and participatory modes for promoting inclusion and the capacity to resolve social problems. The idea of extended transformation only raises the issue of whether the global institutional effectiveness can serve as an evolving, reflexive framework for understanding the transformative possibilities of the global civil society. This of 

For a critical response to Germain and Kenny’s critique, see Murphy (1998). Murphy’s argument is that focusing on Gramsci’s ideas should not detract from the more important aim of understanding international relations. 71

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns course is not an easy question. And I suspect it raises an equally more complex issue for critical theorists in the IR field: namely, that the effectiveness of a global civil society requires voluntary cooperation that is arguably more volatile because of the absence of a global state and the whimsical nature of power politics. Such volatility might explain the skepticism of some less-than idealistic moral cosmopolitans who have turned to Habermas’s thematic arguments regarding legitimisation processes at the global level. At least in this sense, we might say that legitimisation processes furnish us with a better sense of this volatility of power politics (vis-à-vis counterhegemonic forces).

Radical Cosmopolitanism and Dialogical Communities For Habermas, as we already noted, the legitimisation process of global civil society remains weak precisely because realpolitik (de)limits the reasoned argumentation or communication needed to support and reinforce the emancipatory project of this society. Adopting a less formalistic understanding of legitimacy requires a deeper understanding of how global actors reach mutual understanding. Liberal cosmopolitans, such as D avid Held and D aniele Archibugi (1995), argue that the global network of civil society norms – and their capacity to resolve what have become problems of purely global nature – constitutes an autonomised sphere of norms and principles. Such autonomisation, in turn, presupposes the independent capacity of global institutions and frameworks to resolve local problems and to contain state violence. Habermas’s skepticism towards these idealistic cosmopolitan accounts suggests that the politics of unruly states present many intractable challenges of containing realpolitik. More important, his skepticism reveals the problem of enforcement and the attendant fragility of consensus-making and decision-making at the global level. Even so, Habermas remains optimistic that new global institutional networks – comprised of criminal courts, NGOs and social movements will continue to evolve into strong, ethical frameworks of governance. And many moral cosmopolitans in critical IR theory share this view. Andrew Linklater, for instance, argues that communication and dialogue are required to solidify our commitments at the global level in a post-Westphalian world. As he states: 

As Linklater states: ‘Reflections on the current state of the diplomatic dialogue are one way of monitoring the extent to which international society is making progress toward or falling short of the ideal of a universal speech community from which no voice is excluded and from which no dissenting perspective goes unheard … Such reflections on the current state of the dialogue can hardly lead to confusion about the most desirable trajectories of development and patterns of change, although it would be foolish to expect that they will either settle the most profound disputes about the best means of promoting change or solve complex disputes about who has most responsibility for initiating political action’ (1998, 42). 72

Cr it ic al Th eo r y, Mar xism and Int er nat io nal Et h ic s Habermas’s argument that actors may consent to arrangements without being aware of a range of constraints upon their thought and behavior is essential to a thin universality in which increasing numbers of human beings cooperate to eradicate unjust exclusion without assuming that they will ever converge around one universalizable conception of the good life (1998, 99). This thin form of universality is based on the growing shared commitment among states to refrain from committing severe forms of harm (hence international criminal courts). It reflects, according to Linklater, the evolution of the legitimacy of the modern states system into what he calls an advanced stage of the emancipatory project. As he puts it: ‘the highest stages of moral-practical learning should promote a post-conventional ethic which defines the prima facie moral responsibility of engaging the whole of humanity in open dialogue about matters of common interest’ (ibid., 121). Linklater’s post-conventional ethic, however, raises a critical practical question: whether reasoned argumentation can resolve the larger empirical problem that pervades much of critical theory in globalisation studies; namely, the justification of coercive measures to promote global justice. How, in other words, do the political challenges of enforcing global norms and rules produce the conditions of realpolitik (reaction and resistance) within and between states? Curiously, Linklater chooses a somewhat more radicalised path to overcome the problematic implications of this challenge; more particularly, the softening of the normative requirements of Habermas’s proceduralism in order to counter the subordination of identity to the procedural process of administering justice (ibid., 2005). But it is also true that the legitimisation process at the global level lacks the sort of communicative power that Habermas has identified in terms of the constitutional state; that is, how deliberation and argumentation within the public sphere can be converted into the enforcement powers administered by the state (Habermas 1996). Critics of discursive approaches such as Andrew Kuper (2004) argue that discursive arguments at this level fail to address the problematic dimension of public reasoning; namely, that representation at global institutions operates most effectively when it is prioritised in terms of serving the best interests of the global community. Representatives and officials of global institutions, in other words, are not the state officials who must convert the democratic will into an enforceable decision: rather they are the single constituted body of deliberation and enforcement charged with the task of formulating the reasoned arguments and ethical reasons for promoting security and peace. In this sense, public reasoning at global institutions differs from the democratic will-formation of Habermas’s discursive model. To be sure, this coercive problematic represents a rather stark challenge for Habermasian-based critical theorists. Postmodernists might argue that any rational justification of coercion reflects the values and beliefs of hegemonic states, and that universal values remain inextricable from the production of such power. D errida (1994), for instance, has alluded to this impasse in terms the ‘inexhaustibility of

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns the other’. Another radical, postmodern approach asserts that conflicts and antagonisms between and among societal discourses ultimately reach a point of undecidability (Laclau 1979). The moment of this undecidability is what represents political visibility or intelligibility. This may be an interesting way of expressing the ‘political counter’ in counter-hegemonic movements; however, it does little for promoting an ethical and practical platform of global justice that can explicate the institutional requirements for empowering marginalised groups and promoting the ideas of equality and freedom. At the very least, it reflects what Richard Bernstein (1991) refers to as postmodern/modern divide – the ongoing struggle to posit an ‘ethical-political’ view of contemporary society. For Bernstein, this pervasive skepticism, or Stimmung, demands that we situate ethics within selfreflective immanent critical theory that can address the ongoing tensions within critical theory.

Conclusion Critical theory, as we saw, focuses on the possibilities of political transformation and the concrete practices of authoritarian structures. In recent years, it has evolved into a pliable and pluralistic approach in international relations theory, one that has allowed IR theorists to understand the transformative possibilities of globalisation and global society. With critical IR theory encompassing such a wide range of radical theory approaches, it is only fair to expect that more social theorists will prefer its open-ended, self-reflective orientation to positivist approaches. But such anticipated success also comes with a caveat: that more interest in critical theory will generate increasing pressure to develop a pragmatic, concrete set of parameters that can compete with other paradigmatic social theory approaches (Wendt 1999). Indeed, because the hyperactive idealism and criticism can breed denial and skepticism, or a cunning cynicism towards authority, it can also dampen the critical spirit and desire of working toward a coherent platform of global justice. This does not mitigate the fact that critical international theory is, as Richard D evetak explains, ‘self-consciously normatively charged … and is interested in knowing how, and to what extent, political transformation is possible (1995, 36). However, it does raise the question of whether the pluralistic rigor of critical IR theory can eventually become empirically robust. To promote immanent critical social theory, then, we need to confront the ambivalence of its own success; that is, the increasing tension between responsive governance and the power of socialist states. The stakes, some might argue, could never be higher in areas such as South America, where Hugo Chavez has established a socialist state and, more importantly, a pan-social populism in Latin America that is capable of resisting the effects of global capitalism and Western imperialism. Indeed, on the one hand, the Chavez-led populist movement amounts 

See, for instance, Foucault (1980); D errida (1994); D er D erian and Shapiro (1989). 74

Cr it ic al Th eo r y, Mar xism and Int er nat io nal Et h ic s to a systematic effort to redress trade imbalances, poor access to healthcare and severe poverty. On the other hand, it exposes the dangers of state authoritarianism; namely, the suppression of political dissent. We of course need to ensure that socialist regimes do not inherit the very authoritarian and unethical tendencies (lack of accountability) that they have sought to remedy. After all, critical theory can and should be about understanding and exposing these reifying tendencies of furthering social justice.

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns — (1999), ‘Bestiality and Humanity: A War on the Border between Legality and Morality’, Constellations 6:3, 264–73. — (2003), Toward a Cosmopolitan Europe’, Journal of Democracy 14:4, 86–100. Hayden, P., and el-Ojeili, C. (2006), Confronting Globalization: Humanity, Justice and the Renewal of Politics (New York: Palgrave). Hegel, G.W.F. (1967), Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Held, D . (1995), Democracy and the Global Order (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press). Hoffman, M. (1998), ‘Critical Theory and the Inter-Paradigm D ebate’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 16:2, 231–49. Horkheimer, M. (1992), Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Continuum). — (1996), Eclipse of Reason (London: Continuum). — and Adorno, T. (1993), Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Continuum). Jay, M. (1971), The Dialectical Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press). Kant, I. (1989), Kant’s Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kuper, A. (2004), Democracy Beyond Borders: Justice and Representation in Global Institutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Laclau, E. (1979), Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (Oxford: Blackwell). Lapid, Y. (2001), ‘The Third D ebate: On the Prospects of International Relations Theory in a Post-Positivist Era’, International Studies Quarterly 33:3, 235–54. Lenin, V.I. (1964), Collected Works, Volumes 15–25 (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House). Linklater, A. (1998), The Transformation of Political Community (Cambridge: Polity Press). — (2001), ‘The Changing Contours of Critical International Relations Theory’, in Jones, R. (ed.), Critical Theory and World Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner). — (2005), ‘The Politics of D ialogical Communities and the Civilising Process’, Review of International Studies 31:1, 141–54. Löwith, K. (1964), From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought (New York: Columbia University Press). Lukàcs, G. (1971), History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Marcuse, H. (1981), One-Dimensional Man (Boston, MA: Beacon Press). Marx, K. (1964), ‘1844 Philosophic and Economic Manuscripts’, in Bottomore, T. (ed.), Early Writings (New York: McGraw-Hill). — (1978), The Marx Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton). (Based on orig. publ. of 1849.) Murphy, C. (1998), ‘Understanding IR: Understanding Gramsci’, Review of International Studies 24:3, 417–25. Neufeld, M. (1993), Reconstructing International Relations Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Nietzsche, F. (1956), Birth of Tragedy and Genealogy of Morals (New York: D oubleday). Pollack, F. (1991), ‘The Authoritarian State’, in Arato, A., and Gebhardt, E. (eds). Risse, T. (2000), ‘Let’s Argue!’, International Organization 54:1, 1–39.

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Cr it ic al Th eo r y, Mar xism and Int er nat io nal Et h ic s Roach, S. (2005), Cultural Autonomy, Minority Rights and Globalization (Aldershot: Ashgate). — (2008), Critical Theory and International Relations: A Reader (New York: Routledge). Rosenberg, J. (2000), The Follies of Globalization (London: Verso). Ruggie, J. (1998), Constructing World Polity (New York: Routledge). Rupert, M. (1995), Producing Hegemony: The Politics of Mass Production and American Global Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Sassoon, A. (2005), ‘Intimations of a Gramscian Approach to Global Civil Society’, in Germain, R., and Kenny, M. (eds), The Idea of Global Civil Society: Politics and Ethics in a Globalizing Era (London: Routledge). Smith, S., Booth, K., and Zalewski, M. (eds) (1996), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Weber, M. (2004), ‘The Critical Social Theory of the Frankfurt School and the “Social Turn” in IR’, Review of International Studies 31:1, 195–209. Wendt, A. (1999), Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Wyn Jones, R. (2001), Critical Theory and World Politics (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner).

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5 Feminist Ethics in World Politics Fiona Robinson

Feminist international ethics is only just beginning to gain a small measure of recognition in the field of international relations. While international ethics and feminist IR have, separately, progressed steadily over the past two decades, feminist approaches have struggled to find a voice within the sub-field of international ethics or ‘international political theory’. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the important work done by feminists in exploring the relevance of existing feminist moral and political philosophy to world politics, as well as offering innovative perspectives on the role and nature of ethics in this context. While some of this research has focused on elaborating epistemological, ontological and methodological debates in feminist international ethics, much of it has explored particular issues from the perspective of feminist ethics, including war and conflict, political violence, security and peacebuilding, global democracy and global governance. Not surprisingly, feminist international ethics has engaged in debates which characterize international ethics more broadly. Indeed, feminists, like other critical theorists in the field, have reacted strongly against the idea of ‘ethics’ as a systematic set of principles that can be applied to issues or dilemmas in international relations in order to render the latter, say, less driven by power and interests and more inclined to ‘moral’ behaviour. Many feminists within the field are committed to non-traditional or post-positivist methodologies, and are hence suspicious of the idea that any theory could be non-normative or value-free. Of course, from this perspective, it becomes very difficult to distinguish feminist international ethics from other kinds of feminist theory and research in the field. The apparently normative nature of all feminist thought may be tied to the very nature of feminism, as both a set of ideas – alternative lenses through which to view the social world, and a set of practices – including a broad and diverse social movement aimed at challenging the oppression and exclusion generated by gendered rules, norms, institutions and structures. 

On the feminism and the ethics of war, see Sjoberg (2006); on political violence see Hutchings (2007a); on security and peace-building see Porter (2007); on feminist ethics and global governance see Robinson (2009); on human rights and global democracy see Gould (2004).

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Moreover, there has been dissent within feminism regarding ethics in the context of world politics. The different ‘waves’ of feminism, and the debates among them, are largely reproduced in most readings of feminist ethics. In particular, the tension between liberal feminists and ‘cultural’ feminists – often referred to as ‘first’ and ‘second’ wave feminists, becomes a debate in feminist international ethics between approaches emphasizing equality, rights and justice and those stressing difference and care. Moreover, so called ‘third wave’ feminists – post-colonial and, especially in the context of IR theory, postmodern feminists – seek to propel the debate in ethics beyond equality/justice and difference/care towards a recognition of multiple and shifting identity positions and power relations – particularly in terms of race in the context of neo-colonial relations of power in the global political economy. This third perspective is often set against the first and second, giving rise to the debate between the epistemological standpoint of ‘universal sisterhood’ and the inherently unstable subjectivities of difference. While these categorizations do point to some real divisions between diverse feminist ethical perspectives, relying too heavily on discrete categories of feminism can lead to over-simplification, reification and even caricature. Careful reading of the work of feminist scholarship in this field reveals accounts of ethics which eschew rigid classification and competing perspectives. Indeed, for many feminists concerned with global ethics, the emphasis is on seeking out and bringing to light points of connection and relationship – especially those which remain hidden in traditional accounts of international ethics. These connections include those that exist among allegedly ‘competing’ accounts of feminist ethics, as well as those relationships which may be found in the real, lived experiences of women and men which, for many feminists, provide the starting point for thinking about ethics. I will argue that the ability of feminists to uncover these heretofore ‘unseen’ connections and relationships is a defining important feature of feminist ethics which sets them apart from other kinds of international ethicists. Established dichotomies – between masculinity and femininity, global and local, universalism and ‘cultural relativism’, cannot be sustained from a feminist perspective. As Elisabeth Porter (1999, x–xi) has argued, perspectives that assume either/or options provoke inclusionary/exclusionary responses. Her own approach to feminist ethics criticizes dualistic ethics and suggests that interrelationships, intersections, fluidity and syntheses are approaches that more adequately incorporate the fullness of being ethical humans. This kind of approach is indicative of the widespread commitment among feminists, in their ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies, to relationality. Ontologically, this entails a rejection of the atomistic, individualistic ontology of liberalism, and a recognition that the self and subjectivity are constituted in and through relationships. Epistemologically, it means recognizing the relationships between the world ‘out there’ to our theories and meaning systems, as well as to our own identities and subjectivities (Peterson 1997, 185). Methodologically, feminists are widely committed to foregrounding the relationship between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. Thus, it is in the context of the real, lived experiences of different women in a variety of different contexts that apparently intractable theoretical dilemmas 80

Feminist Et h ic s in Wo r l d Po l it ic s – especially between the universal and the particular as it plays out in the context of different types of feminism – can be resolved. This chapter will seek to draw out the points of connection between various different feminist approaches to international ethics. To that end, it begins with a brief overview of ‘international ethics’, focusing on the actual and potential role of feminist ethics within that literature, and outlining some of the broadly shared features of all feminist approaches to ethics. Of course, in spite of widely shared commitments, the intellectual debts and moral starting points of feminist ethicists vary. While my goal in this chapter is to highlight the considerable unity in feminist international ethics, it remains important to understand these different starting points in order to make sense of both why different perspectives exist, as well as to identify areas of overlap and possible convergence. I will suggest that there are at least three starting points for feminist ethics: first, those approaches which seek to expand or revise an existing understanding of ethics in order to address the moral voices and needs of women; second, approaches which focus on the recovery and foregrounding of specifically feminine values; and third, approaches which emphasize ‘difference’ and the intersection of gender with race and class in the context of a situated, concrete and politicized ethics. These three broad ‘types’ are by no means mutually exclusive; indeed, many feminist ethicists who seek to foreground women’s or ‘feminine’ values do so in a way which sees those values as being socially constructed in the context of gender, racial and class hierarchies. Furthermore, the feminist project of revising or expanding an existing tradition – of rights-based ethics, for example – may be informed by critical work which seeks to listen to the distinct moral voices of women as they are played out in concrete social, political and legal contexts. Finally, all of these approaches start from a fundamental dissatisfaction with traditional accounts of ethics, and a belief that rethinking ethics is a necessary first step towards feminist social and political transformation. With this in mind, the final section of the chapter will explore the idea of feminist international ethics as critical theory.

International Ethics and Feminist Ethics Until very recently, it was a commonplace assumption that ethics and morality have no place in international relations. The long-standing dominance of political realism as the authoritative explanatory theory of international politics has been widely taken as a sign of an absence of ethics in the ‘real world’ of realpolitik. Similarly, the dominance in the discipline of positivist methodologies – which have vigorously upheld the distinction between ‘facts’ and ‘values’ – has suggested that the world of ‘values’ or ‘the normative’ is illegitimate terrain for the serious IR scholar. Of course, there have been cracks in the realist-positivist armour. Indeed, when, in 1992, Steve Smith wrote of the ‘Forty Years D etour’, he was referring to what he saw as the beginning of the end of the hegemony of these approaches to IR. 81

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Certainly, Smith was right to suggest that we were in the midst of a ‘resurgence of normative theory in international relations’; the work of authors like Charles Beitz (1979), Chris Brown (1992; 1995), Mervyn Frost (1996) and Andrew Linklater (1990; 1998) has been highly influential in galvanizing what is now referred to as ‘international political theory’. In contrast to IR theory – which has focused on providing explanations for war and for the behaviour of states – international political theory (IPT) is centred around decidedly normative questions like ‘D o we have obligations towards people who live beyond our own borders?’ and ‘If so, how do they differ from our obligations to our fellow citizens, if at all?’ (Brown 2007, 35). While the work of these scholars derives from a variety of influences – including Kant, Hegel, Marx and Habermas – they share a commitment to the application of analytical political philosophy to the ethical dilemmas of international politics. Furthermore, while their approaches vary in terms of their commitment to reflexivity and ‘the critical project’, this work remains largely committed to ‘the normative question’ – determining what is right moral action in a variety of different contexts (see Korsgaard 1996). In other words, states and other actors in global politics may (and probably will) act to maximize power or interests, or in accordance with local or customary norms or values; the task of the normative theorist, however, is to prescribe universally right or ‘moral’ action, and provide an answer to the question about how morality is entitled to its authority over us (Walker 1999, 203–4). While critical theorists have propelled the debate on international ethics forward by challenging the ‘fact/value’ distinction, it has been argued by feminists that their neglect of the gender dimensions of injustice is a demonstrable weakness for the practical application of their theories (Ackerly and True 2006, 244). As a result, much feminist research in the field of international ethics has sought to build upon the insights of critical theory, but has foregrounded the role of gender as a constitutive feature of global power relations. Thus, feminist international ethics is engaged in investigating the role of gender in the construction and maintenance of dominant moral discourses, and the ‘particular patterns of costs and benefits associated with this’ (Hutchings 2000, 122). In this way, feminist international ethics may be seen as part of a wider literature on feminist ethics more broadly, which seeks to ‘enter claims of and on behalf of women as full moral agents’; while there may be many ways of doing this, all approaches to feminist ethics must interrogate the root causes of this exclusion by asking ‘Where the moral terms set for our common life come from, and what authority, and whose experiences, do they represent?’ (Walker 1992, 72). In addition, most feminists agree that feminist intellectual enquiry cannot be separated from the goals of feminism as a social and political movement. Thus, as Cole and Coultrap-McQuin (1992) argue, the discussion of feminist ethics grows out of a commitment to feminism, and thus must start with two basic assumptions: (1) women and their values are of profound moral significance in and of themselves; and (2) social institutions and practices have encouraged discrimination against women and the suppression of their moral views. This suggests two further features of feminist ethics: first, that it cannot abstract away from the social processes and institutions in which claims about ethics are necessarily embedded by asserting that 82

Feminist Et h ic s in Wo r l d Po l it ic s these are not the ‘stuff’ of moral theory; and second, that feminists engage in moral analysis not for its own sake, but because they are seeking to transform existing norms and social conditions. In the context of global politics, moreover, this entails an interrogation of gendered values, institutions and structures in contemporary global governance. However, IR feminists are not only interested in the ‘global’ level; on the contrary, they are concerned with the ways in which gender relations are woven together in a variety of different contexts and at a many different ‘levels’ – including household, neighbourhoods, communities and states.

Gendering International Ethics: Rights and Capabilities It is hardly surprising that rights-based approaches have been predominant in the feminist literature on international ethics. First, rights-based ethics are dominant in international ethics more generally; in John Vincent’s words, human rights ‘have become a kind of lingua franca of ethics talk’ in international relations (1992, 267). Although dominant approaches to human rights and rights ethics are contested – not least by feminists – human rights are recognized all over the world as the moral and legal mechanism for ensuring the dignity and equality of all persons, and for giving voice to the moral and legal claims of individuals against states and other powerful collective actors. As Charlotte Bunch has argued, the concept of human rights is one of the few moral visions ascribed to internationally (1990, 486). In spite of the widespread recognition of rights claims, however, feminists argue that women’s rights are not commonly classified as human rights. The central explanation for this exclusion lies in the Western liberal construction of the public/ private dichotomy. This is the socially constructed distinction between the private sphere of the home and family – constructed as ‘feminine’ – and the public sphere of politics and the economy, which is assigned to men and ‘masculinity’. While this dichotomy has been traced back to ancient Greece, its current form emerged with the early liberals as a way of justifying the failure to extend individual liberties to women in the home. The rejection of the subjugation of men to patriarchal rule – the divine right of kings – and the continuation of patriarchy in the home, through the subjugation of women, could only be justified by proclaiming that these two spheres were of a fundamentally different nature, to which the same rules did not apply. As Peterson and Parisi argue, feminists are nowhere more united than in criticizing how this dichotomy obscures systemic power relations and, specifically, gender inequalities in intimate, family and household relations (1998, 143). Particularly relevant here is the issue of violence against women. From wartime rape to the less visible but more pervasive domestic violence, violence against women has been constructed as ‘sexual’ and ‘private’ and hence not a human rights issue. Charlotte Bunch, however, claims that violence against women in its many forms is not just a grave affront to human rights, but also a major underlying source of human insecurity for women all over the world (1990, 32). In her defence of a feminist human rights approach to human security, Bunch argues that there is ‘no 83

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns better paradigm for human insecurity than violence against women’ which directly and indirectly affects vast numbers of people (ibid.). In addition to challenging conventional views of civil and political rights as protections from only state power (and thus denying state responsibility in private sphere activities), feminists have also challenged the dominance of these so called ‘first-generation’ rights in legal discourse and international human rights law. However, even economic, social and cultural rights – which might seem, at first glance, to be more ‘relevant’ to women, especially in the light of the growing ‘feminization’ of poverty – rest on a distinction between the public and the private. Women’s reproductive labour – including vital care work and ‘housework’ – is devalued and often unremunerated. Where women do work in paid labour – including in the manufacturing, service and informal sectors – their work is often undercompensated since they are not identified as the primary breadwinners. Feminists seek to highlight the importance for women’s human rights of the gendered division of labour, women’s disproportionate carework burden globally, and their vulnerability with respect to neoliberal global restructuring. As important as women’s rights have been for both articulating a feminist global ethics, and as a platform for feminist activism globally, they have not been without controversy. As Martha Minow argues, feminist approaches to rights have sometimes appeared contradictory, in that they seem to argue that women have both the right to be regarded and treated like men and the right to special treatment or valorization of women’s differences (1990, 230). But as Minow suggests, feminism has demanded a ‘dual strategy’ in a world which has simultaneously used men as the norm and demeaned any departure from that norm. Specifically, feminists have had to challenge the standard of female inferiority in a ‘male world’; but they have also had to challenge the idea that the capacities and resources of women are relevant only in the separate sphere of the private realm (ibid.). Rather than rejecting the idea of rights completely, Minow argues for what she calls a ‘social relations’ approach to rights; this approach emphasizes the basic connectedness between people and the injuries that result from social isolation and exclusion (ibid., 379). Moreover, she points out that this approach especially rejects distinctions drawn between people which express or confirm the distribution of power in ways that harm the less powerful (ibid.). Similarly, Carol Gould presents a convincing case for a ‘social ontology’ which gives priority to a conception of socially understood individuals-in-relations as the basis for the extension of democratic decision making to all contexts of common activity (2004, 4). From this perspective, rights must be conceived of as ‘intersubjective and social’, in that it is only through mutual recognition of our ties with others that rights have meaning for us (ibid., 144). This has important, specific implications for human rights doctrine: it provides a ‘useful corrective’ to the idea of circumscribed, correlative duties with the more expansive notion of continuing responsibility for others; furthermore, it supports and adds weight to rights arguments for subsistence, health care, education and basic needs (ibid., 145–6). While many feminist scholars have thus engaged in the challenge of revisioning women’s rights in the global context, one influential approach to women 84

Feminist Et h ic s in Wo r l d Po l it ic s in international development and human security rejects the language of rights altogether. However, it is of some significance that Martha Nussbaum describes her ‘capabilities approach’ to women, human development and human security as ‘one species of a human rights approach’ (2005, 175). Like human rights approaches, Nussbaum defends the need to list a set of specific, universal entitlements that are plural and heterogeneous, non-commensurable and all of central importance to basic justice (ibid.). These capabilities, like rights, should be used to define a minimum level of social justice, and ought to be recognized and given something like constitutional protection in all nations (ibid., 179). But unlike rights, capabilities focus on the actual ability of citizens to perform various important functions. Any life that lacks any one of the enumerated capabilities, she argues, will fall short of being a good human life. Nussbaum sees this as not only an ethical argument, but also a guide for assessing levels of development in countries and asking about the role of public policy in meeting human needs (1995, 87, 85). Interestingly, however, Nussbaum argues that one of the reasons why her capabilities approach is different from, and superior to, a human rights approach is ‘because of the way in which it can handle issues of care, issues that are fundamental to achieving sex equality, as recent feminist work has demonstrated’ (2006, 47). Specifically, she argues that because capabilities language articulates ‘what people are actually able to do and be’, it is better placed to foreground inequalities that women suffer inside the family (ibid., 50). In order to do this effectively, Nussbaum claims that we must start from a conception of the person that is ‘more Aristotelian than Kantian’ – which eschews the picture of the rational, abstract agent in favour of one that sees the person from the start as both ‘capable and needy’ (ibid., 64). Thus, while Nussbaum’s approach to ethics in world politics is clearly influenced by existing liberal conceptions of ethics, her aim is to revise these traditions in order that they may address the particular inequalities and oppressions suffered women. Furthermore, Nussbaum’s focus on development means that she is particularly concerned with these inequalities faced by poor women in developing countries. Her approach to women and development, however, takes a staunchly universalist position, which dismisses so called ‘cultural relativism’ as an ‘appeal to existing power’ (2005, 178). In the context of violence against women, she asserts that ‘not all differences are worth preserving’, and that, in particular, ‘differences that inflict pain and harm should be eradicated’ (ibid.). The antidote to this kind of moral and cultural relativism, argues Nussbaum, is to endorse unequivocally a list of capabilities as goals for international society. These capabilities will apply to all human beings; however, in order to ensure women’s emancipation from violence, they will be constructed in such a way that certain freedoms – those which license things like marital rape and sexual harassment – are excluded. Conversely, in order to defend ‘coercive laws’ against these activities, we will have to say that ‘the freedoms we are protecting here are fundamental’. As she puts it, these freedoms ‘are entitlements of all citizens based on justice, and women so far do not have them’ (ibid., 179). Clearly, Nussbaum’s approach demonstrates an awareness of the need to address the question of gender justice in ways which recognize women’s carework. 85

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns The question remains, however, whether Nussbaum’s capabilities approach is actually equipped to do the moral work of making sense of, for example, the values of care and the feminization of carework globally. Can the universalism of this approach actually make room for feminine and ‘feminized’ values such as care, responsibility, trust and attentiveness to the needs of particular others? Furthermore, can Nussbaum’s universalist approach address differences among women – differences of race and class, space and place? The following sections will address these questions through an examination first, of feminist approaches to ethics based on care, empathy and compassion, and second, of post-colonial and postmodern approaches to feminism.

Feminine and ‘Feminized’ Values: Care, Empathy and Compassion While feminist scholars of women’s rights and capabilities have sought to revise existing traditions of moral theory to make them more relevant to the needs and concerns of women, other approaches to feminist ethics have sought to articulate a more fully ‘feminine’ ethics. In other words, rather than seeking to revise or expand the idea of personhood or ‘human being’ to make it more ‘truly’ universal – to encompass the perspective and needs of women – this second group of feminist ethicists have focused, instead, on the ‘different voice’ of women, and have constructed ‘feminist ethics’ as an alternative to universalist, human-centred moral theories. Perhaps the most well known of these approaches is the ‘ethics of care’. The work of Carol Gilligan – in the field of moral and developmental psychology – is often described as the ‘catalyst’ to the escalation of writings on feminist ethics in the 1980s (Porter 1999, 7). Over the course of a decade, Gilligan’s research involved listening to men and women, boys and girls, talk about morality and their relationships with others. She describes how the women’s voices began to sound distinct to her, and how they contrasted with the psychological descriptions of identity and moral development which she had been reading and teaching for so many years (1982, 1). Specifically, what Gilligan heard was a voice which seemed to see the world as ‘comprised of relationships rather than people standing alone, a world that coheres through human connection rather than a system of world’ (ibid., 29). It was on the basis of these findings that Gilligan challenged the developmental theory of Lawrence Kohlberg – her own mentor at Harvard – who argued that only a principled understanding of fairness resting on the logic of equality and reciprocity could be recognized as the highest stage of moral development, or ‘moral maturity’ (ibid., 27). The influence of this book on thinking about ethics – especially feminist ethics – can hardly be overestimated. The most influential early text – Nel Noddings’ Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education – explicitly argues that 86

Feminist Et h ic s in Wo r l d Po l it ic s care is ‘essentially feminine’ (1984). This led to a series of debates about the dangers of essentialism, and about the relationship between an ‘ethic of justice’ and an ‘ethic of care’. Later work on care ethics moved away from this early essentialism towards an account of care ethics which was self-consciously political; here, the aim was to bring ‘care’, as both a set of values and a type of work, out of the ‘private’ sphere. In so doing, these feminists sought not to ‘transfer’ care from one sphere to another (that is, the public sphere), but rather to deconstruct the gendered dichotomies which have created two separate realms of human existence (see Held 1993; Tronto 1993; Sevenhuijsen 1998). This move, I would argue, marked the transformation of care ethics from a ‘feminine’ ethics to a ‘feminist’ ethics. Recently, research on care ethics and carework has begun to explore care in a global context (Robinson 1999b and 2006; Held 2006; Porter 2006 and 2007; Lawson 2007). In 2006, Elizabeth Porter argued that there has been minimal application of the themes of care ethics to political issues in international relations, where the care of distant humans is paramount. Her article, and her 2007 book, go on to elaborate on what she calls a ‘politics of care’ and a ‘politics of compassion’, where the latter links the universal and the particular in that it ‘assumes a shared humanity of interconnected, vulnerable people and requires emotions and practical, particular responses to different expressions of vulnerability’ (2006, 99). Her politics of compassion extends the recent work in favour of ‘politicizing’ care to more remote or spatially extensive situations where there is a lack of previous history and everyday relationship (2007, 101). For Porter, the practices of a compassionate politics includes attentiveness to suffering, active listening to discern needs, and responding actively, with wisdom and compassion, to human suffering. Importantly, Porter sees this approach as reconciling the tensions – very evident in debates on care ethics – between universal claims to justice and particular moral responsibilities to ‘concrete’ others. As she argues, ‘compassion presupposes shared humanity, but is an emotional and practical response to particularity’ (2006, 102). This approach, Porter contends, is particularly useful in addressing human security and peace-building. Similarly, in The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political and Global, Virginia Held suggests that the ethics of care is ‘beginning to influence how those interested in international relations and global politics see the world and our responsibilities in it, and it holds promise for new efforts to improve global relations’ (2006, 155). Like Porter, she argues that a global ethic of care can be constructed in order to extend caring moral responses beyond the realm of private or personal relationships to the global context. Other scholars from within the disciplinary framework of IR have alluded to the potential of the ethics of care to provide a normative framework for a number of moral issues in world politics. Neta Crawford, for example, argues that ‘an ethic of care could be useful … in promoting an attitude that arrests the potential paternalism in the discourse and practice of humanitarian intervention’ (2002, 430). An ethic of care which is ‘attentive to human needs, responsible, competent and 

Porter cites Robinson (2001 and 1999b) as a ‘notable exception’ to this. 87

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns responsive to the agency of others’, she suggests, may be a good starting point for thinking about how to balance emerging cosmopolitan sensitivities with the need to respect difference and avoid paternalism (Farer et al. 2005, 231). These ideas are developed by Robinson (2009) in the context of humanitarian intervention, and, specifically, the recent emergence of the responsibility to protect (see ICISS 2001). There are a number of ways in which an ethics of care is particular salient in the context of humanitarian intervention. First, the relational ontology of this approach – which emphasizes human interdependence and mutual vulnerability – overcomes the dichotomies between the ‘needy’ and the ‘strong’, ‘victims’ and ‘agents’, ‘objects’ and ‘subjects’, in the construction of categories in humanitarian intervention. An ethical approach which highlights the fundamental place of access to adequate care for human security also destabilizes the ‘inside/outside’ dichotomy by pushing theorists and policy-makers to address human suffering not only in zones of crisis, but to examine critically the state of care within their own societies. Finally, by foregrounding the moral value of sustained attentiveness to the needs of others, this approach breaks down the distinction between ‘crisis’ and ‘normality’, putting the very idea of ‘humanitarian intervention’ in question (Robinson 2009). While IR has been slow to engage with the feminist discourse of care ethics, other related values, such as empathy, have had considerable influence in the field. Christine Sylvester’s widely cited and influential article, ‘Empathetic Cooperation: a Feminist Method for IR’, was not written primarily as a feminist ethical analysis of world politics. Indeed, it is more of a methodological blueprint for feminists which offers a solution to the tension in feminist epistemology between the need for a women’s standpoint, and the need to avoid essentialisms, especially those which produce and reproduce neo-colonial relations of power. To this end, Sylvester asks ‘whether it is possible to re-script IR to be more gender-inclusive without wedding us perilously to a “women’s” international relations’ (2002, 246). While this analysis has offered feminists some useful tools in the effort to deal with these epistemological and methodological questions, the idea of ‘empathetic cooperation’ has also had considerable influence on thinking about feminist ethics in the context of world politics. Empathy, claims Sylvester, ‘taps the ability and willingness to enter into the feeling or spirit of something and appreciate it fully in a subjectivity-moving way. It is to take on board the struggles of others by listening to what they have to say …’. (2002, 256) In another essay, Sylvester relates empathy to women’s ‘more relationally oriented world’, and cites Nancy Hirschman’s idea of ‘relational autonomy’ as a feminist alternative to the liberal idea of the unencumbered individual agent (1989, 186–7). Recently, Sylvester’s idea of empathetic cooperation has been used by Laura Sjoberg in her feminist reformulation of just war theory. Specifically, Sjoberg argues that empathetic cooperation can be understood as a ‘feminist security ethic’ (2006, 48). Specifically, she argues that empathetic cooperation can serve as a foundational principle for just war theory in line with feminist values. This approach, she argues, allows for the possibility of ‘synthesizing’ justice – here, in the context of war – with the values of ‘care’ (ibid., 45–6). As Sjoberg argues, ‘[e]mpathetic cooperation eschews gendered competition for a collaborative, needs-based approach to the 88

Feminist Et h ic s in Wo r l d Po l it ic s practice of international politics … Empathetic war-fighting establishes an emotional connection between international adversaries in order to moderate behaviour and encourage compromise’ (ibid., 146). While care ethics offer a powerful critique to traditional, non-feminist moral theories, it has been argued by critics, some sympathetic, that care can be understood as a morality which can perpetuate relations of dependence of the powerless on the powerful. In one particularly interesting critique, Uma Narayan has argued that the discourse of rights and the discourse of care collaborated to justify the project of imperialism to the citizens in the colonizing countries: Pervasive racist stereotypes about the negative and inferior status of enslaved or colonized Others were used both to justify denial of the rights enjoyed by the colonizers, and to construct the colonized as childish and inferior subjects, in need of the paternalistic guidance and rule of their superiors (1995, 133). Narayan argues that care discourse can sometimes function ideologically, to justify or conceal relationships of power and domination. Specifically, she refers to ‘paternalistic caring’ of the sort found in colonial discourse, which can also be wielded as a form of control and domination by the powerful and privileged (ibid., 135). Her critique is sympathetic, but clear: While aspects of care discourse have the potential virtue of calling attention to vulnerabilities that mark relationships between differently situated persons, care discourse also runs the risk of being used to ideological ends where these ‘differences’ are defined in self-serving ways by the dominant and the powerful (ibid., 136). Similarly, Lugones and Spelman have argued that, in the demand for a unified, ‘different’ voice for women, differences among women are silenced. They insist that while women’s voices may sometimes speak in unison, that still means two (or more) voices, and not just one. They argue that the demand for a woman’s voice does little, if anything, to help most women of colour in the articulation of their experience. As Lugones explains: Most Hispanas cannot even understand the language used in these theories – and only in some cases the reason is that the Hispana cannot understand English. We do not recognize ourselves in these theories … They seem to ask that we leave our communities or that we become alienated so completely in them that we feel hollow (Lugones and Spelman 1983, 576). The following section will address the issue of ‘difference’ in the work of postcolonial and postmodern approaches to feminist ethics. Once again, I will reject the assumption that the differences between these and other feminist ethical approaches are irreconcilable; all types of feminist ethics can, and indeed, must learn from one another for transformation to be possible. 89

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Situating and Politicizing Ethics: Gender, Race and Class The study of ethics in a global context must address the challenges of difference and diversity in the context of historical and contemporary geopolitical and economic relations. In international relations, most post-colonial scholars applaud the extent to which feminism has contributed to the re-visioning of IR theory; however, many also argue that many feminists have ignored the exclusion of race in IR, and its implications for the exercise of power (Chowdry and Nair 2002, 9). While post-colonial feminists do not advance explicitly ethical or moral arguments, their normative claims focus on both ‘difference’ and ‘power’ (Hutchings 2007b, 177). Thus, they tend to reject, or be wary of, the ethical claims that refer to women’s rights, women’s capabilities, or care, empathy and compassion as the ‘different voice’ of women. As Hutchings explains, ‘[t]he point repeatedly made is that not only do feminists have different political priorities in different contexts, but also that there are power relations between women, along lines of race, class and sexuality, that are insufficiently acknowledged by the egalitarian and radical feminist traditions’ (ibid., 176). For example, drawing on poststructuralist and post-colonial discourses, Vivienne Jabri seeks to articulate a normative position that takes into account questions of ‘self-constitution and self-transformation as the baseline from which we may begin to reimagine both the agency of women and the political spaces that surround the diversity of women’s lived experiences’ (1999, 40). Specifically, she argues that culture cannot simply be ‘added’ to gender, since this move will necessarily fail to account for the complexities of subjectivity and the multiple narratives that constitute the self (ibid.). As an antidote to this, Jabri argues for a form of ‘aesthetic ethicality’ that recognizes the plurality of the self and the plurality of cultured subjectivity. On this view, the ‘ethical moment’ is defined as the ‘critical ontology of ourselves’ that ‘seeks neither domination over others nor a systematization of its terms in a universal discourse aimed toward an international constituency’ (ibid., 40, 57). A similar concern regarding the possibilities of essentialism and universalization in the category of gender is evident in feminist post-foundational scholarship in international law. Anne Orford, for example, has explored the relationship between feminism and international law in the ‘aftermath of colonial occupation’. In particular, she is concerned with the potential and limitations of gender as a category in ‘attempting to think ethically about developing a new politics of reading humanitarian intervention’ (2003, 39). While Orford admits that her reading of international intervention is ‘enabled by the energies and insights of feminism’, she also maintains that a ‘feminist analysis of intervention that focuses on gender alone, without analyzing the exploitation of women in the economic “South”, would operate to reinforce the depoliticized notion of “difference” that founds the privileged position of the imperial feminist’ (ibid., 56, 65). Her strategies for overcoming this include paying attention to the context of increasing economic integration in which such invention takes place. This involves a fundamental rethinking of what ‘internationalism’ means in the twenty-first century (ibid., 68–9). 90

Feminist Et h ic s in Wo r l d Po l it ic s These ideas resonate in the work of other feminists who are particularly concerned with difference and ‘culture’ in the context of feminist ethics. Refusing to become mired in the intractable debate over ‘culture’ and universalism, Alison Jaggar suggests that feminist international ethics, rather than focusing exclusively on unjust local traditions (and Western feminists’ task of ‘exposing’ these injustices), should instead situate these traditions in a broader geopolitical and geoeconomic context (2004, 62). Thus, she argues that topics on the agenda of ‘intercultural dialogue’ about global justice for poor women in poor countries must be questions about the basic structure of the global political economy, as well as the economic policies of those Western governments that direct and indirectly affect poor women’s lives. The problem of militarism, and its effects on women, must also be considered, as should questions of remedial justice, reparation or compensation for past and continuing wrongs (ibid., 71–2). This foregrounding of the material realities of the global political economy should by no means suggest that cultural difference is unimportant. On the contrary, it suggests that identity, ‘culture’ and political economy are mutually constitutive. Feminist ethics must be about uncovering those relationships, as well as about fostering moral and social learning and friendship among ‘different’ women.

Conclusion: Feminist Ethics as Critical Theory Feminist ethical perspectives offer important, critical insights on the role and nature of ethics in world politics. As this chapter has demonstrated, there is no single, unitary approach to feminist ethics; just as feminist theory involves a wide range of perspectives, feminist ethics demonstrates much internal diversity in terms of both visions of the substance of morality, and the wider questions of epistemology, methodology and ontology. That said, this chapter has also sought to move away from strict divisions between ‘types’ of feminist ethics, choosing instead to highlight points of connection and relation among these approaches. With this in mind, this concluding section will offer an account of feminist ethics as critical theory, and will suggest that this may be a particularly fruitful methodological and theoretical direction for feminist ethics in world politics. Without a doubt, feminism has made a substantial contribution to the broad field of critical IR theory. Unlike non-feminist critical theory, which often reproduces the gender bias of traditional approaches, or at least sidelines feminist and genderrelated concerns, feminists have not only foregrounded gender, but have often successfully integrated the perspectives of other marginalized voices into their conversations. Moreover, for many feminist critical IR theorists, normative analysis is central to their methodological approaches. As Brooke Ackerly and Jacqui True argue in their proposal for a methodology for feminist critical IR theory, sociological inquiry into women’s and men’s lives guides normative theorizing about justice and equality, while normative theoretical precepts are continually evaluated in terms of their import in actual struggles against injustice and inequality (2006, 91

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns 248). Moreover, they suggest that feminist critical theorists cannot discern the normative dimensions of their work without considering their implications for feminist practice and social change; this point resonates clearly with the arguments of feminist philosophers about the nature of feminist ethics (ibid.). Kimberly Hutchings has argued that the task of deconstructing the relation between gendered relations of power and particular ethical stances is particularly crucial to feminist ethical analysis of political violence (2007a, 100). Thus, Hutchings’ feminist approach to the ethics of war does not support a particular feminist ‘security ethic’ based on empathy or care; as she claims, feminist ethics is not ‘reducible to the articulation of feminist ideals but requires constant interrogation of the conditions of possibility of putting those ideals into practice in a world which is gendered all the way down’ (ibid., 103). According to Hutchings, this does not mean that judgement and transformation are impossible; on the contrary, it simply emphasizes the fact that ethics does not operate as a ‘counter’ to world politics, it is ‘one of the discourses through which world politics is actively produced and reproduced’ (ibid.). From this perspective, when feminist ethicists address issues of care, for example, the point is not to valorize caring values, nor to suggest that women are better carers than men. Rather, the point is to ask critical questions about the nature and status of the practices and values of caring in different social contexts. In the context of world politics, that means asking questions about relations of power in the global political economy, as well as about the ways in which globalization is constructed by and through particular norms and ideational forces, including hegemonic accounts of masculinity. Current trends globalization – specifically, the sexualization and commodification of female migrant labour – are part of wider trends in neoliberal restructuring which contribute to the socio-economic and political conditions that feminize, racialize, denigrate and undervalue the values and activities of care. Rather than being upheld as a fundamental, life-sustaining activity of citizenship, care is associated with subservience, self-sacrifice, dependence and a lack of agency. Care work, housework and sex work – increasingly done by migrant women of colour – occupies the lowest rungs on the ladder of ‘success’ in the global political economy. Often alone and ‘out of place’, these women are, ironically, highly vulnerable in terms of their lack of relationship networks, family and formal citizenship status. Thus, these ‘foreign’ carers are perhaps the least likely to receive good care, and many lead lives that are perpetually insecure. Feminist international ethics will never occupy the rarified terrain of traditional, non-feminist moral philosophy. Feminists cannot, and will not, abstract away from the real lives and relationships of men, women and children in their social and political contexts. Feminist ethics seeks to understand the confluence of moral ideas and understandings which license exploitative practices and perpetuate women’s insecurity at household, community, national and global levels. While styles of ethical reasoning and epistemological commitments among feminist ethicists may vary, it is this commitment to critique, and to fostering alternative, non-hierarchical moral and cultural understandings, which may ultimately serve as a site of convergence for feminist ethics. 92

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References Ackerly, B., and True, J. (2006), ‘Studying the Struggles and Wishes of the Age: Feminist Theoretical Methodology and Feminist Theoretical Methods’, in Ackerly, B., et al. (eds), Feminist Methodologies for International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Beitz, C. (1979), Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Brown, C. (1992), International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (New York: Columbia University Press). — (1995), ‘International Political Theory and the Idea of World Community’, in Booth, K., and Smith, S. (eds), International Relations Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity). — (2007), ‘International Relations as Political Theory’, in D unne, T., et al. (eds), International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Bunch, C. (1990), ‘Women’s Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re-Vision of Human Rights’, Human Rights Quarterly 12:4, 486–98. — (2004), ‘A Feminist Human Rights Lens’, Peace Review 16:1, 29–34. Chowdry, G., and Nair, S. (2002), ‘Power in a Postcolonial World: Race, Gender and Class in International Relations’, in Chowdry, G., and Nair, S. (eds), Power, Postcolonialism and International Relations: Reading Race, Gender and Class (London: Routledge). Cole, E., and Coultrap-McQuin, S. (eds) (1992), Explorations in Feminist Ethics: Theory and Practice (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). Crawford, N. (2002), Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Farer, T.J., with D . Archibugi, C. Brown, N. Crawford, T. Weiss and N. Wheeler (2005), ‘Roundtable: Humanitarian Intervention after 9/11’, International Relations 19:2, 211–50. Frost, M. (1996), Ethics in International Relations: A Constitutive Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gilligan, C. (1982), In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Gould, C. (2004), Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Held, V. (1993), Feminist Morality: Transforming Culture, Society and Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). — (2006), The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political and Global (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Hirschman, N. (1989), ‘Freedom, Recognition and Obligation: A Feminist Approach to Political Theory’, American Political Science Review, 83:4, 1227–44. Hutchings, K. (2000), ‘Towards a Feminist International Ethics’, Review of International Studies 25:5, 111–30.

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns — (2007a), ‘Feminist Ethics and Political Violence’, International Politics 44:1, 90– 106. — (2007b), ‘Feminist Perspectives on a Planetary Ethic’, in Sullivan, W., and Kymlicka, W. (eds), The Globalization of Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) (2001), The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa: International D evelopment Research Centre). Jabri, V. (1999), ‘Explorations of D ifference in Normative International Relations’, in Jabri, V., and O’Gorman, E. (eds), Women, Culture and International Relations (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner). Jaggar, A. (2004), ‘“Saving Amina”: Global Justice for Women and Intercultural D ialogue’, Ethics & International Affairs 19:3, 55–75. Korsgaard, C. (1996), The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lawson, V. (2007), ‘Geographies of Care and Responsibility’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97:1, 1–11. Linklater, A. (1990), Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical Theory and International Relations (London: Macmillan). — (1998), The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the PostWestphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity). Lugones, M., and Spelman, E. (1983), ‘Have We got a Theory for You! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the D emand for “The Women’s Voice”’, Women’s Studies International Forum 6:6, 573–81. Minow, M. (1990), Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion and American Law (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Narayan, U. (1995), ‘Colonialism and its Others: Considerations on Rights and Care D iscourses’, Hypatia 102, 133–40. Nardin, T., and Mapel, D . (eds) (1992) Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Noddings, N. (1984), Caring: A Feminist Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Nussbaum, M. (1995), ‘Human Capabilities, Female Human Beings’, in Nussbaum, M., and Glover, J. (eds), Women, Culture and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities (Oxford: Oxford University Press). — (2005), ‘Women’s Bodies: Violence, Security, Capabilities’, Journal of Human Development 6:2, 167–83. — (2006), ‘Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice’, in Kaufman, A. (ed.), Capabilities Equality: Basic Issues and Problems (New York: Routledge). Orford, A. (2003), Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Peterson, V.S. (1997), ‘Whose Crisis? Early and Post-Modern Masculinism’, in Gill, S., and Mittelman, J.H. (eds), Innovation and Transformation in International Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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Feminist Et h ic s in Wo r l d Po l it ic s Peterson, V., and Parisi, L. (1998), ‘Are Women Human? It’s Not an Academic Question’, in Evans, T. (ed.), Human Rights Fifty Years On: A Reappraisal (Manchester: University of Manchester Press). Porter, E. (1999), Feminist Perspectives on Ethics (New York: Longman). — (2006), ‘Can Politics Practice Compassion?’, Hypatia 21:4, 97–123. — (2007), Peacebuilding: Women in International Perspective (Abingdon: Routledge). Robinson, F. (1999a), ‘The Limits of a Rights-based Approach to International Ethics’, in Evans, T. (ed.), Human Rights Fifty Years On: A Reappraisal (Manchester: University of Manchester Press). — (1999b), Globalizing Care: Ethics, Feminist Theory and International Relations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). — (2001), ‘Exploring Social Relations, Understanding Power, and Valuing Care: The Role of Critical Feminist Ethics in International Relations Theory’, in Seckinelgin, H., and Shinoda, H. (eds), Ethics and International Relations: Beyond Dichotomies (Basingstoke: Macmillan). — (2004), ‘Human Rights and the Global Politics of Resistance: Feminist Perspectives’, Review of International Studies, 29:SI, 161–80. — (2006), ‘Care, Gender and Global Social Justice: Rethinking Ethical Globalization’, Journal of Global Ethics, 1:3, 5–25. — (2009). ‘Feminist Ethics and Global Security Governance’, in Franceschet, A. (ed.), Ethics and Global Governance (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner). Sevenhuijsen, S. (1998), Citizenship and the Ethics of Care: Feminist Considerations on Justice, Morality and Politics (New York: Routledge). Sjoberg, L. (2006), Gender, Justice and the Wars in Iraq: A Feminist Reformulation of Just War Theory (Lanham, MD : Lexington Books). Smith, S. (1992), ‘The Forty-Years D etour: The Resurgence of Normative Theory in International Relations’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 21:3, 489– 506. Sylvester, C. (2002), Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Tronto, J. (1993), Moral Boundaries: Towards a Political Ethics of Care (London: Routledge). Vincent, R.J. (1992), ‘The Idea of Rights in International Relations’, in Nardin, T., and Mapel, D . (eds), Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Walker, M. (1999), Moral Understandings: A Feminist Study in Ethics (New York: Routledge). Walker, R.B.J. (1992), Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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6 Poststructuralism Maja Zehfuss

Ethics is a great idea. Ethics is concerned not only with what counts as good ways of living, but with how to act in relation to others. If we are in tune with a particular ethical view of how to live and act, we can feel good about ourselves. Ethics is, in John D . Caputo’s words, ‘wholesome, constructive work’ (1993, 4). Hence it would be strange not to endorse ethics. One might find enacting ethics unrealistic, impossible in a particular situation or even in international politics generally. But it seems, on the surface, difficult to see how one could object to ethics as such. Objecting to ethics would, after all, seem to amount to being against doing the right thing. Caputo, however, who is inspired not least by the work of Jacques D errida, has declared himself to be against ethics, loudly and unequivocally. Unfortunately, his provocative title – Against Ethics (1993) – incorrectly suggests that poststructuralists cannot or do not do ethics. This chapter will show that, quite to the contrary, it would be difficult to overstate the significance of ethical (or rather ethicopolitical) questions to poststructuralist research. Simply put, there just is no way around such questions. Given that, as D avid Campbell and Michael D illon have observed, ‘Life is ethical without being grounded’ (1993, 166) it is simply impossible not to engage such questions, even though there is no straightforward ‘grounded’ answer to them. Consequently, there is a considerable body of poststructuralist work that not only examines the problem of ethics in the practice and scholarship of international politics but that also seeks to articulate an ethos or even an ethics. This chapter cannot take account of the entirety of this large and varied body of work. The range of issues examined includes humanitarianism and humanitarian interventions (Campbell 1998a and 1998b; Edkins 2003; Orford 2003), human rights (Pin-Fat 2000; Orford 2003), war and its representation (Campbell 1993; D auphinée 2007; Zehfuss 2007c), the impact of technology on war (D er D erian 2001), immigration policies (D oty 2003; Edkins and Pin-Fat 2005), citizenship (VaughanWilliams 2005), the persistence of colonialism (Beier 2005), foreign policy (Bulley 2009) and many others. Such research is inspired by the work of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques D errida, Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc



I would like to thank D an Bulley for his insightful comments on a draft of this chapter.

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Nancy and Friedrich Nietzsche amongst others. Inevitably, given the differences amongst these thinkers, there is debate amongst various scholars about how to approach ethical questions rather than a common poststructuralist ‘take’ on ethics. Therefore, instead of attempting an impossible summary of this body of work, this chapter seeks to highlight a selection of significant issues and questions that arise for those inspired by poststructuralist thinkers (see Lawler 2008). Poststructuralist work is not least interested in the political implications of speaking and acting with reference to ethics. The chapter starts by outlining the way in which poststructuralist work has shown discourses of ethics to promote an unwarranted sense that we are doing the right thing. In the second section it examines the way in which subjectivity is produced when we articulate and invoke ethics. Ethics inevitably makes claims not merely about what should be done, but also about the context within which anything is done in the first place and by whom. Claims about ethics therefore implicitly provide resolutions to questions about subjectivity and agency. Put differently, what we perceive to be ethical is always already reliant on our understanding of the world and our role within it. It is impossible to understand ethics – what we should do or what is right – as separate from questions of politics, not least the question of how we come to believe that particular responses to these questions are more valid than others. What we understand ethics to be is already political and therefore what might be called the politics of ethics must be considered. Hence poststructuralists prefer to speak of ethicopolitical, rather than ethical, questions in order to draw attention to this inseparability of ethics and politics. The problem of ethics/politics arises because we live with others. To assert an ethics is a political move which already implies an attempt to disallow any challenge that the predicament and views of others may pose to us and our grasp of what is right. Any sensitivity to ethics as always already political must remain open to the way in which the other may challenge and contest what may appear right to us. The chapter therefore finally explores some of the responses poststructuralists have given to this problem of ethics, the ways in which they have attempted to rearticulate ethics as an ethical relation that seeks to remain open to the other.

The Problem of Ethics I: Good Conscience What does ethics actually require? Should we redistribute resources across the globe or just within communities known as states? Is redistribution ethical at all? D oes ethics demand that we intervene in other states in order to force the protection of human rights, for example, or should we always let others run their own affairs? Can ethics be promoted by violent means which always already violate ethics at the same time? Scholars have been wrestling with these and similar questions under 

For introductions to these and related thinkers, see Edkins and Vaughan-Williams (2009). 98

Po st st r uc t ur al ism the heading of ethics for some time. These are the easy questions, however. These questions take much for granted, namely that there is something called ethics that we may examine, something that may be clearly distinguished from other sorts of things, such as (most obviously) politics. From a poststructuralist perspective such attempts at engaging with ethics have therefore gone wrong before they have even started; for articulations of ethics are inevitably political. Whatever ethics may be precisely, it is a discourse that articulates what we should do. Scholars may tell us what ethics is, on what it is based and what sorts of behaviour it requires from us, for example. Politicians may employ the idea of ethics to support and defend their policy choices. Although ethics is often treated as above or beyond the squabbles of political life, it is not in fact something independent, written in stone for all time. As R.B.J. Walker has pointed out, ethics ‘is not a repository of principles awaiting application; it is an ongoing historical practice’ (1993, 51; see also Shapiro 1999, 80). Therefore it must be studied as a practice. Questions must be asked about why it has taken particular forms at specific times, how it has changed, what alternative possibilities there are and indeed about what the current practice of ethics enables. In James D er D erian’s words, poststructuralists seek ‘to understand – without resort to external authorities or transcendental values – why one moral or political system attains a higher status and exercises more influence than another at a particular historical moment’ (1997, 58). In other words, some articulations of ethics come to be privileged and it is not least this privileging that engages the poststructuralist curiosity. Put differently, what is at issue is not what ethics, as traditionally understood, may require but why some courses of action come to be construed as ethical in the first place and what that enables. We encounter ethics not least in concrete claims about particular courses of action. When Prime Minister Tony Blair (2003) called on the British parliament to ‘show that we will stand up for what we know to be right, to show that we confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk, to show at the moment of decision that we have the courage to do the right thing’, he was making a normative claim that the war against Iraq was in tune with ethics. Scholars such as Jean Bethke Elshtain have similarly argued that the ‘war on terror’ is just (2003; see also Zehfuss 2007b). Although it might appear as though the rhetorical strategies with respect to the ‘war on terror’ are particularly infused with ethical (and normative) claims, such reasoning is by no means new. In his short book on the 1991 Gulf War, Politics Without Principle, D avid Campbell, for example, examined how debates about Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait ‘reverberated with postulates of ethical reasoning and declarations of moral absolutes’ (1993, 21). He draws our attention in particular to the ‘moral certitude’ expressed in these discussions and its legitimizing function, something that has also been apparent in claims about the ‘war on terror’ (Zehfuss 2007c). More generally, war is often construed not merely as necessary in order to achieve particular aims, such as defending the political community, but rather as good; that is, as required in ethical terms. This enables not only particular wars but indeed the maintenance and development of an entire industry to produce and support war fighting capabilities (D er D erian 2001). 99

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Thus, whilst ethics is meant to be simply a good thing, it is not divorced from politics. Ethics actually works to support what might be seen as ethically problematic courses of action. War is a case in point: this practice, which inevitably involves killing, raises some serious ethical questions. Campbell therefore urges us to consider the ‘costs of conducting politics according to principle’ (1993, 81), as exemplified in the Gulf War. These are costs not least, but by no means only, in terms of the deaths caused by this war. In making this argument, Campbell draws attention to a range of issues that are in need of consideration and critique, and I will examine some of these in later sections of this chapter. Perhaps the most obvious way of critiquing ethics, however, and the one that Campbell invokes in his title, is one that takes issue with its reliance on rules or principles. Walker notes that ethics is about avoiding the intolerable, but that as soon as we try to list what counts as such disagreements ensue. As a result, … discussion invariably moves from consideration of particular cases to attempts to shape universal principles of conduct that might guide rules and laws, cultures and institutions – principles that can be treated as foundational, as permitting the delineation of some Archimedean point from which contention and scepticism may be tamed and controlled (1993, 53). Therefore ethics has traditionally been marked by generality; it provides guidelines for behaviour that can be worked out in the abstract and then applied to particular cases. The problem with this may be clarified by a brief look at D errida’s work. D errida is critical of ‘the generality of ethics’ which he sees as inciting to ‘irresponsibility’ (1995, 61). In D errida’s view a responsible ethics can precisely not be pre-planned or worked out in the abstract, much like the law cannot legislate for justice (ibid., 1992a). Indeed, such an ethics is only ever at issue when we face what he calls an ‘aporia’; that is, when we do not know what to do, when we agonize over a decision because we cannot identify an obviously right way of doing things (ibid., 1992b, 41). So if the question of whether Western powers should have intervened in Iraq in 2003 was an ethical question it was so not because we can invoke a set of rules and principles, for example those enshrined in just war thinking, that would guide us towards ethical behaviour, but rather because this is precisely impossible. It is an ethical (or ethicopolitical) question because we have to work out whether it is right to kill in the pursuit of freedom or even in the pursuit of the protection of other lives and there really is no rule or principle that can take the weight of such a decision from us. Nothing is quite right and few of us will feel happy with either possibility, knowing that people will be killed whatever is decided. Yet the decision is urgent and imperative (see D errida 2002, 296). Being exposed to an ethicopolitical question is therefore not exactly a happy place. We do not get to feel good. We can make our best effort, of course, and part of that will be to acquire as much information about the situation and the likely consequences of different courses of action as we possibly can. Yet knowledge, though crucial, cannot provide us with an answer to the question of what we should do. In D errida’s words: 100

Po st st r uc t ur al ism For there to be decision and responsibility … one needs to know as much as possible and as well as possible, but between one’s knowledge and the decision, the chain of consequence must be interrupted. One must, in some way, arrive at a point at which one does not know what to decide for the decision to be made. Thus a certain undecidability, contrary to what one says and often pretends to think, the undecidability – this one, in any case – is the condition or the opening of a space for an ethical or political decision, and not the opposite (ibid., 298). In a sense, therefore, ethics is about taking a risk. An ethicopolitical decision, even if taken after acquiring as much knowledge as possible, ‘must advance towards a future that is not known, that cannot be anticipated’ (ibid., 231). In contrast, the sort of general ethics that D errida takes issue with merely serves to provide us with ‘good conscience’ (ibid., 1992b, 41); that is, with the illusion that we have done the right thing. Caputo’s forceful and unequivocal declaration that he is against ethics (1993; see Campbell and Shapiro 1999, x–xi) is an objection to this illusion. In other words, Caputo objects to ethics not because he considers ethical questions unimportant, but rather because ethics, as traditionally conceived, arguably oversimplifies the complexity of living with others. In his words: Ethics makes safe. It throws a net of safety under the judgements we are forced to make, the daily, hourly decisions that make up the texture of our lives. Ethics lays the foundations for principles that force people to be good; it clarifies concepts, secures judgements, provides firm guardrails along the slippery slopes of factical life. It provides principles and criteria and adjudicates hard cases. Ethics is altogether wholesome, constructive work, which is why it enjoys a good name (1993, 4). But this making safe does not work and Caputo sees any deconstruction of ethics, such as his own, as ‘simply passing the word along that one is rather more on one’s own than one likes to think, than ethics would have us think’ (ibid.). He is concerned, in other words, that when we refer to ethics to guide us with respect to difficult problems we delude ourselves into thinking that there is a set of rules or principles that can somehow sort the problem out. He is against ethics because he does not think this possible. However, he affirms the centrality of the question of what we should do, which for him revolves around obligation: ‘obligation happens, the obligation of me to you and of both of us to others. It is all around us, on every side, constantly tugging at our sleeves, calling upon us for a response’ (ibid., 6).

The Problem of Ethics II: Subjectivity But whose sleeve is being tugged at? As soon as we speak of ethics, we identify – implicitly or explicitly – a subject that is to act ethically. This is so not least because 101

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns language, or at least Western language, typically needs a subject at the centre of any action. D er D erian notes that, rather than ethics being an independent set of principles that serves to regulate behaviour, ‘the ethics of poststructuralism is located in and through the construction of subjectivity’ (1997, 58). That is, whilst traditional ethics requires the prior existence of a subject to whom rules and principles are then applied, poststructuralism not least examines the ways in which subjectivity and identity are produced through the articulation of ethics. Campbell notes as significant the way in which our conception of ethics relies on a particular vision of subjectivity. In his words, ‘the idea that ethics is dependent upon a clearly identifiable moral code only makes sense insofar as there is a recognizably autonomous agent from whom that code derives and in whose service it can be deployed’ (1993, 82). The subject at the heart of ethics is the modern subject, independent and capable of action (see Odysseos 2007). But, more than that, subjectivity in international politics is invested not (merely) in individuals, but in the state. There is an assumption that states ‘as collectivities … behave as subjects’ (ibid., xxvii). Representations of the international realm thus produce the state as the ‘recognizably autonomous agent’ who may (or may not) act ethically. Walker approaches the problem of ethics through an examination of political thought. His Inside/Outside shows how the international is produced through the distinction between the inside of the state – the realm of the possibility of the good life – versus the outside – the realm of anarchy and struggle. Hence he, too, regards state sovereignty as central. In sovereignty ‘the relationship between ethics and universal reason’ is expressed as ‘a spatial dualism of life inside and outside the state’ (1993, 61). The principle of state sovereignty, in other words, ‘embodies an historically specific account of ethical possibility in the form of an answer to questions about the nature and location of political community’ (ibid., 62). What Walker’s argument amounts to is that ‘ethical principles are both constitutive of and central to international relations rather than just a marginal after-thought’ (ibid., 64). The principle of state sovereignty means that the good life is possible only within communities. It therefore also produces the problem of ethicality as one of ethics and international relations, as though the two were separate and somehow needed to be brought together, if possible. By the same token, the asserted distinction between inside and outside also produces the question of whether ethics is possible in foreign policy. Yet this misstates the problem, not least in that it seems to offer the possibility of opting out of ethics. As D an Bulley points out, ethics and foreign policy are really concerned with the same issue, namely with how we produce and respond to otherness (2009). The problem of ethics is always already there, but it is arguably obscured by the notion that states are intelligible as autonomous entities. In Louiza Odysseos’s words, ‘When being-with-others is understood solely as a composition of previously unrelated entities, the constitutive role of otherness in coexistence, and for selfhood itself, is obscured’ (2007, xiii). Odysseos locates the problem in the idea of the modern subject and in particular the way in which subjectivity is thought as given, atomized, independent of context; ‘the effacement by modern subjectivity of its own constitution by otherness’ (ibid., xxx) is at the root of the problem. 102

Po st st r uc t ur al ism Yet the powerful notion of the modern subject is at the same time impossible. The production of such subjectivity necessarily fails (Bulley 2009; Edkins and PinFat 1999; Zehfuss 2007a). The subject is unable to achieve the kind of wholeness imagined for it (Edkins and Pin-Fat 1999, 1). Judith Butler elucidates this issue by showing that it is quite impossible for the subject to give a coherent account of itself as an independent entity. This is worrying for those who think that ethics can only ever be enacted by autonomous and coherent subjects. Butler, however, challenges the claim that the inability of the subject to account for itself somehow disables moral agency; instead she asserts that it may be ‘the condition under which morality itself emerges’ (2005, 8). She argues that it … may be possible to show that the question of ethics emerges precisely at the limits of our schemes of intelligibility, the site where we ask ourselves what it might mean to continue in a dialogue where no common ground can be assumed, where one is, [as] it were, at the limit of what one knows yet still under the demand to offer and receive acknowledgement (ibid., 21–2). Thus, following Heidegger, Levinas, Nietzsche and others, poststructuralists conceive subjectivity differently. Their conception of ethics and politics is not least reliant on an understanding of ‘the radical interdependence of being’ and ‘the always already ethically situated character of life’ (Campbell and D illon 1993, 174, 95–6). As Campbell says: In the move beyond metaphysics, ethics has been transformed from something independent of subjectivity – that is, from a set of rules and regulations adopted by autonomous agents – to something insinuated within and integral to subjectivity. Accordingly, ethics is not ancillary to the existence of a subject (whether that be a person, a state, or some other figuration of identity); ethics is indispensable to the very being of that subject, because a subject’s being is only possible once its right to be in relation to the Other is claimed. This recasting of the issue refigures the moral economy in which responsibility is assigned (ibid., 92). Put simply, we are dependent on others in the most fundamental way possible. Butler points out that the experience of injury, by which she means the experience of 11 September 2001, brings home to us that ‘there are others out there on whom my life depends, people I do not know and may never know’ (2004, xxi). Yet we are not just vulnerable, physically dependent on others; rather our sense of our own being relies on recognition by others. D er D erian therefore asserts that ethics ‘begins with the recognition of the need for the other, of the need for the other’s recognition … An ethical way of being emerges when we recognize the very necessity of heterogeneity for understanding ourselves and others’ (1997, 58). So ethics is related to encountering the other and acknowledging that we ourselves only exist in relation to the other. Yet it is important to be mindful of the way in which a problematic distinction between self and other often asserts itself 103

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns in our ways of thinking about such issues. Odysseos points out that ‘a relational schema towards the other is always already at play’ and that this is obscured by the ways in which international politics is traditionally thought, namely by what she identifies as the ‘ontology of danger’ (2002, 417); that is, the conceptualization of international politics derived from Thomas Hobbes’s thought that construes the other as necessarily always a threat. In the Hobbesian imaginary the other is a problem that we need to be prepared for and very much distinct from ourselves. This line of thinking fails to recognize the way in which we only ever exist in relation to the other. As I argue elsewhere, ‘the question of ethics, of how we should relate to others, is in danger of obscuring the way in which we are always already related to them’ (Zehfuss 2007a, 70). Edkins also stresses the significance of the way in which we and others are made conceptually distinct in the very questions that are asked. She observes in particular that the questions typically asked in debates about humanitarianism make the assumption ‘that ‘we’ and ‘they’ are already distinct, before there is any relationship between us’ (2003, 255). Elsewhere she takes this issue further. D rawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s thought she argues that we are inevitably implicated and indeed exposed, ‘response is an inevitability of our being-with’, and therefore ‘existence is responsibility’ (ibid., 2005a, 382–3).

Ethical Relations Responsibility is thus a key term in thinking about how we do and should relate to those we live with. D avid Campbell and Michael J. Shapiro have acknowledged that poststructuralism is, in some sense, against ethics. They have spoken of this move away from a theory of ethics as one towards a thinking that is ‘motivated by the ethical relation in which our responsibility to the other is the basis for reflection’ (1999, x). Instead of seeking to establish grounds for ethical principles such work is concerned to ‘investigate the contingencies involved in specific, historically situated encounters’ (ibid., ix). This is, they argue, ‘an affirmative position designed to foster the ethical relation’ (ibid., xi). The same move was made by Campbell in Politics Without Principle, where he argues against a politics of principle, whilst not intending his rejection of principle to be an abandonment of ethics (1993, 91). Quite to the contrary: the point of his argument rather is to find a different way of engaging with the issue of ethics. Thus, more broadly, the concerns raised about ethics as rules and principles and the attention drawn to the significance of the question of subjectivity in relation to ethics do not amount to a rejection of ethics. Rather, as Odysseos has observed, in part what is at stake is ‘the need to effect a change in the meaning and intention of “ethics”’ (2002, 403). Odysseos’s work is particularly interesting in this context. She talks of moving towards ‘the articulation of disposition or sensibility toward the other’ (2007, 151). She, too, contrasts such a stance to what ethics as traditionally conceived might offer: ‘Openness to others cannot come from universalizing ethical construction and codification; rather, it requires questioning of “our” own ethics and the 104

Po st st r uc t ur al ism cultivation of a disposition towards the other’ (ibid., 182) It should by now be clear that the response that is occasioned by the move away from ethics (but not away from ethical concerns) is ‘a response that heeds, more than ever, the desire to hear the voice of the other and witness its suffering and pursue no ethical project that unwittingly obscures its very object of concern’ (ibid., 151). The challenge, in other words, is to be open to the other, or perhaps even to welcome the other, without, however, reducing the other to the same. The challenge is to acknowledge the other as other and not to, implicitly or explicitly, in the very act of recognition, make them conform to our expectations of what are acceptable ways of life, for example. This is a seriously difficult thing to do. When we offer aid, we may be concerned with how the resources we make available are used. When we come to the assistance of those we see as being abused, we may wish to be sure that our intervention leads to a less oppressive society. Yet when we make what we do dependent on the other’s behaviour, signing up to liberal economic and political principles, for example, we are already in the process of turning the other into the same. This could also be said about the requirement that those alleged to be terrorists disarm before political negotiations can begin; it is only if they accept our rules of the political game that we are prepared to or even able to hear their claims. When we are not able to make the other conform or to interpret them as already the same, recognition is problematic. Interventions made in the wrong sort of way – by asylum-seekers sewing their lips together, for instance – are in danger of not being seen as an ethicopolitical intervention, but rather as self-mutilation, not part of politics (Edkins and Pin-Fat 2005, 21). Such disallowing of interventions from the political discourse is a withholding of recognition: the other is seen as other and cannot be acknowledged as doing so would challenge our grasp of politics, our grasp of what it is for us to be in the world. Yet this is precisely the challenge. The conundrum of the (im)possibility of such recognition is central to thinking through ethicopolitical questions. The difficult challenge of a disposition or openness towards the other is often framed as the issue of responsibility towards others (Campbell 1994; Edkins 2000; Jabri 1998; Zehfuss 2007c). When others face starvation or human rights abuses, for example, we are called to responsibility. The call of the other demands a response. Obligation, to recall Caputo’s words, tugs at our sleeve. One of the problems that arise is that we are unable to enact our responsibility towards the other without already failing to do so towards other others. It is simply not possible for us to be responsible to all others at the same time. In D errida’s words, ‘I cannot respond to the call, the request, the obligation, or even the love of another without sacrificing the other other, the other others’ (1995, 68). The problem therefore is that as soon as I take responsibility for one other, I must at the same time give up the demands of a more general ethics. According to D errida, ‘I can respond only to the one … that is, to the other, by sacrificing the other to that one. I am responsible to any one (that is to say to any other) only by failing in my responsibility to all the others, to the ethical or political generality’ (ibid., 70). Put differently, ‘I can respond only by sacrificing ethics, that is, by sacrificing whatever obliges me also to respond, in the same way, in the same instant, to all the others’ (ibid., 68). This does not mean, 105

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns however, that it is somehow not worth trying or that we may excuse ourselves on the grounds of the impossibility of the endeavour. Campbell has examined responsibility or what he calls the ‘task of outsiders’ (1998a, 15) in relation to the war in Bosnia. He calls for a ‘deterritorialization of responsibility’ (ibid., 166). Ethical obligation does not stop at the border. Vivienne Jabri pursues a similar angle. For her, too, responsibility goes beyond the confines of the state. Although Campbell and Jabri differ not least in terms of their precise attitudes towards the problem of the modern subject, they endorse strikingly similar attitudes towards the problem at hand, what Campbell calls an ‘ethos of political criticism’ (ibid., 4) and Jabri an ‘ethos of critique’ (2007, 167). Odysseos characterizes this more broadly as ‘thinking of ethics as ethos’ (2002, 404); drawing on Heidegger, she conceives ethos as ‘the mode, and attitude, with which man relates to what arrives and “resides in nearness to him”’ (ibid., 414). If responsibility for issues arising in what is considered the international sphere resides not only with the sovereign state, others come to be implicated, not least those who are in a position to speak and write about them. Thus, this conception of the ethicopolitical realm raises the question of the responsibility of intellectuals and scholars (Edkins 2005b; Zehfuss 2007c). For Jabri those thinking and writing about issues of international politics – war, in particular – are implicated: ‘Writing on war brings forth particular responsibilities, not least of which is the responsibility to recognise the impact of the writing in the construction of narratives that come from the uncertainties surrounding particular situations of violent conflict’ (2007, 19–20). D oty (2007) and D auphinée (2007) have raised the question of the violence of our writing itself, of whether we must strive to write differently in the face of our responsibility towards those about whom we write. D auphinée powerfully frames her work on the ethics of researching war as an examination of her own struggle with the question of her responsibility and indeed her own implication in the conflicts in Bosnia. She raises a significant issue in a particularly troubling way. We are not always only engaged in interacting with ‘nice’ people, with others to whom we would naturally want to extend our help. Often the other is perceived as fundamentally different (see Blaney and Inayatullah 2004). Therefore questions arise about how to respond to and accommodate this difference without reducing it to the same. This question becomes particularly acute when the way in which the other is unlike us comes to be seen as an ethical issue; that is, when the other is not just different, but objectionable or even intolerable. The current mantra that Western states should not or indeed cannot engage with ‘the terrorists’ because they violate the rules of the civilized political game and therefore are represented as evil is a case in point. D ifference, in other words, is not normatively neutral. Particular others are especially challenging to the question of our responsibility. This is the issue that D auphinée engages head on. She tells us how her research in Bosnia has ‘attuned her to the fact that [she is] responsible, all the time and for everything’ (2007, 13). Taking her cue from Levinas, D auphinée argues that she is responsible to the other before ‘he ever turns to face me, before he ever speaks, before I ever know, before I ever hear, see, or read about what he had done’ (ibid., 34). That is, we are responsible, whoever the other may be. 106

Po st st r uc t ur al ism The problem then is that we are responsible to the other and the other is ‘also the Serb – the one who has been made intolerable on the basis of his intolerance’ (ibid.). To put it more bluntly, D auphinée examines how, since she is always already responsible to the other, she is responsible towards the perpetrator, the war criminal. Thus, the problem is not merely that we do not have the capacity to live up to our responsibility towards the many others whom we recognize as deserving of our recognition and support. The problem rather is ‘the love for the guilty’ (ibid., 15). Those drawing on Levinas suggest that encountering the other is not least about encountering the other as absolute alterity. The other’s existence challenges us because the difference of absolute alterity ‘cannot be subsumed into the same’ (ibid., 23). The other is not another ‘I’, just differently socialized, but rather exterior, different. Facing the other may thus challenge our way of being in the world (ibid.). Whether or not we judge any other we may encounter to be out of sync with the way in which we think things should be done, we have to accept their being in the world, not least because, as we saw earlier, we ourselves depend on their recognition. Thus who the other may be, what they may have done, does not come into it. Walker asserts that the ‘primary ground for ethical reflection … remains a capacity to identify the intolerable’ (1993, 52). That, however, does not absolve us from the question of what to do in the face of the intolerable, in the face of our responsibility towards the one whom we see as intolerable. The idea of responsibility is anyway not a panacea for the tricky issues of ethics; it has even enabled military action, giving rise to all sorts of ethical problems. Moreover, both Campbell and D auphinée are talking about our responsibility towards people elsewhere, in their case in Bosnia. ‘Elsewhere’ is, in this line of thinking, a tenuous category, but the question of responsibility in the context of the international is often posed as one about intervention, about responses to conflicts in political communities beyond our own. One of the potent challenges for politics and ethics in recent times has, however, been the question of what ethics or responsibility might require not when we go to the other but when the other comes to us. Although the legitimacy of excluding non-citizens from states is often taken for granted, this in fact raises serious questions. Why is it that we appear to be more ready to see our responsibility in conducting ‘humanitarian’ military operations abroad then in welcoming in our communities those fleeing the very human rights abuses at issue? In other words, the question of hospitality arises. As D an Bulley points out, nothing could be more ethical than welcoming the other into our own community (2009). Put differently, due to the distinction between inside and outside ‘a significant possibility for enacting ethics has been the hospitable welcoming of the outside into the inside’ (ibid., 2006, 647). D errida even asserts, as Bulley reminds us, that ‘ethics is hospitality’ (D errida 2001, 17). Hospitality is, in the most basic terms, an openness towards the other, though the issue is of course more complex. Bulley takes his cue from D errida and his distinction between conditional and unconditional hospitality. Crucially, however, either presupposes a home. If this is so, then the distinction between inside and outside is, in one sense, necessary: ‘For hospitality to be possible there must be an inviolable home, but that home must be constituted by closure as the very possibility of openness’ (Bulley 2006, 107

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns 652). Bulley argues that in his analysis of Bosnia Campbell (1998a) fails to recognize this, and that this is a significant problem. He asserts that ‘by denying Bosnian identity the possibility of a negotiated “at-home”, Campbell effaces a ‘Bosnian’ responsibility to the other’ (Bulley 2006, 653). More broadly, Bulley is concerned that the desire to move beyond the undoubtedly problematic distinction between domestic and international has unintended and counterproductive implications; for to ‘abandon an inside separated from an outside too quickly would mean to abandon a key to the ethical’ in international politics (ibid., 663). He suggests that instead we need to conceive the relation between inside and outside differently. Michael J. Shapiro claims that hospitality can be seen as more than just ‘extending recognition to persons who move from one geopolitical entity to another’. What is significant is ‘a willingness to recognise the other as other’, whether or not they find themselves inside or outside (1998, 711). Recognition may, of course, come in different guises. Roxanne Lynn D oty examines the US–Mexican border and in particular groups who have aimed to provide water to Mexican refugees as they make their illegal crossing, preventing (some of) their deaths. D oty aims to ‘call attention to the “here and now” of ethical encounters which are experienced in very concrete places and moments of time in which the promise [of hospitality] comes to life, even if only momentarily’ (2006, 55). She thus locates the ethical not least in the everyday practices of ordinary people (ibid.) rather than either in the sovereign acts of states or just in difficult decisions that we may arrive at only after agonizing about the right thing to do.

Conclusion The other is crucial to all of this. The other is the one towards whom we are in an ethical relation. In other words, there is a question of who counts as worthy of ethical recognition. In the context of the ‘war on terror’ Butler has been troubled by the limits of that recognition. She asks: ‘Who counts as human?’ (2004, 20) Put differently, she proposes to think in relation to the question of the human. She argues that Western lives have been treated as grievable in a way in which other lives have not, that they have been valued more highly. This, of course, is no surprise to those, like Jabri (2007), who bring a post-colonial sensitivity to the exploration of international politics or those, like Campbell (1998b) and Edkins (2003) who have taken the question of the human seriously in their examinations of humanitarianism. This issue, however, merits pushing further. D rawing on D errida and Nancy, one may raise the question of ‘ethicopolitical relations between all forms of life, irrespective of conventional distinctions such as citizen/non-citizen, human/ animal, and so on’ (Vaughan-Williams 2007, 116; see also Edkins 2005a; 2007). The other, to whom we extend our recognition, at the same time makes it possible for us to recognize ourselves. We depend on the recognition of the other. But, because of that, the other is always also a challenge. The other may contest our right to be as we are, may want to access what we see as our space, may require 108

Po st st r uc t ur al ism a response to their ways of being which may be quite alien to us. Relating to the other as other is not easy. We may not just find it difficult not to reduce the other to the same but may feel ourselves at risk. We and our understanding of what the world is may be contested. The challenge then is to allow that contestation and figure out a way of proceeding in the face of that contestation. The challenge is not to project serious questions raised about ourselves and our ethicality onto the other; for, as argued earlier, we are always already inextricably related to the other. We are not separate. The risk and the challenge do not come from elsewhere. They are already part of who we are. We do not exist in separation from that challenge. Poststructuralists want to remain open to such challenge, to what they sometimes call the future. This openness might be conceived as a negotiation that can never be resolved, that is always ongoing (Bulley 2006, 656–7). Ethics of the kind articulated by these scholars is not an option. It is what we always already do. And ethics is always already political.

References Beier, J. (2005), International Relations in Uncommon Places: Indigeneity, Cosmology, and the Limits of International Theory (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Blair, T. (2003), ‘Statement Opening Iraq D ebate in Parliament’, 18 March. Blaney, D ., and Inayatullah, N. (2004), International Relations and the Problem of Difference (New York: Routledge). Bulley, D . (2006), ‘Negotiating Ethics: Campbell, Ontopology and Hospitality’, Review of International Studies 32:4, 645–63. — (2009), Ethics as Foreign Policy: Britain, the EU and the Other (London: Routledge). Butler, J. (2004), Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso). — (2005), Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press). Campbell, D . (1993), Politics Without Principle: Sovereignty, Ethics, and the Narratives of the Gulf War (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner). — (1994), ‘The D eterritorialization of Responsibility: Levinas, D errida, and Ethics after the End of Philosophy’, Alternatives 19:4, 455–84. — (1998a), National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). — (1998b), ‘Why Fight?: Humanitarianism, Principles, and Post-Structuralism’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 27:3, 497–523. — and D illon, M. (eds) (1993), The Political Subject of Violence (Manchester: Manchester University Press). — and Shapiro, M. (eds) (1999), Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Caputo, J. (1993), Against Ethics: Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation with Constant Reference to Deconstruction (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). 109

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns D auphinée, E. (2007), The Ethics of Researching War: Looking for Bosnia (Manchester: Manchester University Press). D er D erian, J. (1997), ‘Post-Theory: The Eternal Return of Ethics in International Relations’, in D oyle, M., and Ikenberry, G. (eds), New Thinking in International Relations Theory (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). — (2001), Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). D errida, J. (1992a), ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority”’, in Carlson, D ., Cornell, D ., and Rosenfeld, M. (eds), Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (New York: Routledge). — (1992b), The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). — (1995), The Gift of Death (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press). — (2001), On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (London: Routledge). — (2002), Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews 1971–2001 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). D oty, R. (2003), Anti-Immigrantism in Western Democracies: Statecraft, Desire, and the Politics of Exclusion (New York: Routledge). — (2006), ‘Fronteras Compasivas and the Ethics of Unconditional Hospitality’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35:1, 53–74. — (2007), ‘Crossroads of D eath’, in D auphinée, E., and Masters, C. (eds), The Logics of Biopower and the War on Terror: Living, Dying, Surviving (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Edkins, J. (2000), Whose Hunger? Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). — (2003), ‘Humanitarianism, Humanity, Human’, Journal of Human Rights 2:2, 253–8. — (2005a), ‘Exposed Singularity’, Journal for Cultural Research 9:4, 359–86. — (ed.) (2005b), ‘Forum: Ethics and Practices of Engagement: Intellectuals in World Politics’, International Relations 19:1, 63–134. — (2007), ‘Whatever Politics’, in Calarco, M., and D eCaroli, S. (eds), On Agamben: Sovereignty and Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). — and Pin-Fat, V. (1999), ‘The Subject of the Political’, in Edkins, J., Persram, N., and Pin-Fat, V. (eds), Sovereignty and Subjectivity (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner). — and Pin-Fat, V. (2005), ‘Through the Wire: Relations of Power and Relations of Violence’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 34:1, 1–24. — and Vaughan-Williams, N. (eds) (2009), Critical Theorists and International Relations (London: Routledge). Elshtain, J. (2003), Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (New York: Basic Books). Jabri, V. (1998), ‘Restyling the Subject of Responsibility in International Relations’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 27:3, 591–611. — (2007), War and the Transformation of Global Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).

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Po st st r uc t ur al ism Lawler, P. (2008), ‘The Ethics of Postmodernism’, in Reus-Smit, C., and Snidal, D . (eds), The Oxford Handbook on International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Odysseos, L. (2002), ‘D angerous Ontologies: The Ethos of Survival and Ethical Theorizing in International Relations’, Review of International Studies 28:2, 403– 418. — (2007), The Subject of Coexistence: Otherness in International Relations (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Orford, A. (2003), Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Pin-Fat, V. (2000), ‘(Im)possible Universalism: Reading Human Rights in World Politics’, Review of International Studies 26:4, 663–74. Shapiro, M. (1998), ‘The Events of D iscourse and the Ethics of Global Hospitality’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 27:3, 695–713. — (1999), ‘The Ethics of Encounter: Unreading, Unmapping the Imperium’, in Campbell and Shapiro (eds). Vaughan-Williams, N. (2005), ‘Protesting Against Citizenship’, Citizenship Studies 9:2, 167–79. — (2007), ‘Beyond a Cosmopolitan Ideal: the Politics of Singularity’, International Politics 44:1, 107–24. Walker, R. (1993), Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Zehfuss, M. (2002), Constructivism in International Relations: The Politics of Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). — (2007a), ‘Subjectivity and Vulnerability: On the War with Iraq’, International Politics 44:1, 58–71. — (2007b), ‘The Tragedy of Violent Justice: The D anger of Elshtain’s Just War Against Terror’, International Relations 21:4, 493–501. — (2007c), Wounds of Memory: Politics of War in Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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PART II THE ETHICS OF WAR AND PEACE

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7 Just War Theory and the Ethics of War and Peace Brian O rend

War remains one of the most deeply influential and disturbing facets of human existence. Reflection on the ethics of war and peace thus remains constantly relevant and gets continuously refreshed by the progression of new war actions, new war tactics and technology, as well as by the work of new scholars. In this chapter I sample four issues of contemporary and increasing importance, while advancing arguments broadly sympathetic to the just war tradition of thought on these issues. Just war theory frames basic moral rules to aid decision-makers facing the monumental challenges of war and peace. These rules fall into three categories, still referred to in their original Latin: jus ad bellum (‘justice of war’, regarding rules for starting wars); jus in bello (‘justice in war’, regarding rules for soldierly conduct during war); and jus post bellum (‘justice after war’, regarding rules to guide the transition from conflict back to peace). I have selected a topical issue from each of these categories to discuss, culminating in a discussion about post-war regime change. But first, let us consider one of wider and deeper relevance to the entirety of just war theory.

The Nature and Justification of Just War Theory Michael Walzer – the dean of living just war theorists – says repeatedly that the nature or essence of just war theory is that it is a theory of rights. By this he means it is a series of overriding claims which individuals and communities have in connection with their lives and lands, and their entitlements to defend such – with force if need be – from the aggression of others. He writes: I want to suggest that the arguments we make about war are most fully understood (though other understandings are possible) as efforts to recognize and respect the rights of individual and associated men and women. The morality I shall expound is in its philosophical form a doctrine of human rights (1987, 20).

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Though ‘considerations of utility play into the structure at many points … they cannot account for it as a whole. Their part is secondary to that of rights; it is constrained by rights’ (ibid., 6). ‘At every point’, Walzer concludes, ‘the judgments we make [about war] are best accounted for if we regard life and liberty as something like absolute values and then try to understand the moral and political processes through which these values are challenged and defended.’ (ibid., 20) The basic rights which communities have (namely, to political sovereignty and territorial integrity) are, Walzer says, ‘rights to which we attach enormous importance … rights that are worth dying for’. The state rights, he continues, ‘derive ultimately from the rights of individuals, and from them they take their force’. Indeed, ‘[s]tate rights are simply … [the] collective form of individual human rights’ (ibid., 53–4). Consequently, individual rights ‘(to life and liberty) underlie the most important judgments we make about war’ (ibid., xxx). Walzer clearly contrasts rights with utilities in this regard: ‘Rights cannot simply be set aside; nor can they be balanced, in utilitarian fashion, against this or that desirable outcome’ (ibid., 228). Indeed, when we are confronted ‘by those rights, we are not to calculate consequences, or figure relative risks, or compute probable casualties, but simply to stop short and turn aside’ (ibid., 268; see also Walzer 1979, 222). Walzer applies the contrast between the rightsbased view of wartime justice and the utility-based view to two cases in particular, both from the Second World War. In the first case, the Free French forces enlisted the support of Moroccan mercenaries during the Second World War and, in return for the latter’s assistance during the Italian campaign, agreed among other things not to interfere with the Moroccans should they decide to rape Italian women. Many women were raped as a result. Walzer contends that ‘the argument for giving soldiers privileges of this sort is a utilitarian one’ (ibid., 133–4). The French were focused on securing their overall goal, which was driving the Nazis out of France. They mistakenly allowed the end to justify the means and committed an injustice by making this deal with the Moroccan mercenaries. In the second case, Walzer believes the decision to drop the atomic bomb was unjust and the product of utilitarian thinking. Then American President Harry Truman reasoned that an American invasion of Japan to end the Pacific War would cost about a million American lives (he apparently did not figure Japanese lives into the mix.) To avoid such slaughter Truman deployed atomic weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force an unconditional surrender upon Japan. Though there were some military targets within both cities, everyone knew that the civilian populations were much larger (Walzer 1991, 330–31). So Truman’s reasoning was utilitarian: better that these comparatively few innocents die than to risk a broader slaughter, even if that were to involve only legitimate targets like soldiers. The innocent few must pay the price for the greater good of ending the war more quickly with fewer overall casualties. Walzer’s criticism is scathing: ‘To kill 278,966 civilians (the number is made up) in order to avoid the deaths of an unknown but probably larger number of civilians and soldiers is surely a fantastic, godlike, frightening and horrendous act.’ Further, utilitarianism ‘encourages … [this kind of] bizarre accounting’ (ibid., 262–8, 210). It is only ‘the acknowledgement of rights that puts a stop to such calculations 116

Just War Th eo r y and t h e Et h ic s o f War and Peac e and forces us to realize that the [deliberate] destruction of the innocent, whatever its purposes, is a kind of blasphemy against our deepest moral commitments’ (Walzer 1991, 330–331; also see Nagel 1971, 126). This is all very clearly and strongly put. Yet while I am a proponent of both just war theory and human rights, I am not persuaded that all of just war theory reduces to a set of rights of this almost absolute, non-consequentialist, and side-constraining nature. Nor do I think that Walzer’s own reworking of just war theory can sustain such a reading. Consider for example the six standard rules of jus ad bellum: • • • • • •

just cause; right intention; public declaration of war by a proper authority; last resort; probability of success; proportionality.

Analysing these rules, it seems to me that they do not all reduce to a set of rights or entitlements; rather, it seems more profitable and accurate to view these rules as a kind of commonsensical blending of rights-based, first-principle concerns with utility-based appeals to expected outcomes. I think these six rules divide neatly in half in this regard: the first three (just cause, right intention and public declaration) do indeed evince non-consequentialist concerns with rights to go to war, with fair procedures for launching armed conflict, and with having a morally appropriate mindset in doing so. But the last three (last resort, probability of success and proportionality) are not non-consequentialist: they are manifestly designed to force decision-makers to consider the consequences of resorting to armed force. For instance, am I likely to win if I go to war? The requirement of last resort seems philosophically motivated by the conviction that war is so serious in its costs and consequences that everything reasonable short of it must first be tried. And proportionality appeals not to either/or first principles regarding ‘do I have the right to do this or not?’ but, rather, to an empirically informed and graded or scalar sense of prudence: is the problem really so bad that war, as a measured response, likely to solve it? I submit, then, that jus ad bellum represents a wise balance between rights and utilities – between consequentialist and non-consequentialist concerns – and not the subordination of one to the other. Similarly, when we turn to the rules of jus in bello, we do not witness the unparalleled triumph of rights. In my view the relevant rules of jus in bello are: • • • • • • •

discrimination and non-combatant immunity; benevolent quarantine for prisoners-of-war (POWs); due care for civilians; respect for the doctrine of double effect (the DD E); proportionality; no use of prohibited weapons; no use of means ‘mala in se’ (evil-in-themselves), such as rape campaigns. 117

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Obviously rights are centrally involved here: what are soldiers entitled to do? Which protections can POWs claim from their captors? To which immunities are civilians entitled? There is no denying that. But concern for consequences is also manifestly present. My analysis, for instance, of proportionality in the ad bellum sphere applies straightforwardly to the in bello form of the rule as well. The DD E also includes a proportionality element, as it enjoins one to weigh the worth of the tactic against the costs needed to obtain it. Moreover, many jus in bello rules – such as the prohibition on restricted weapons – are designed not just with first-principle rights and duties in mind but also with an overall concern to regulate and control conduct so that escalation of hostilities is avoided, and the fighting observes limits and remains restrained, thus preventing savagery, barbarism and the fearsome risks of a downward spiral of unrestricted violence. Larry May, in his important book, War Crimes and Just War (2007), urges us to recall the virtue ethics tradition when it comes to interpreting jus in bello, going so far as to say that the rules of jus in bello all reduce to the attempt to get soldiers to observe and practise the virtue of humaneness, or humanity, in their wartime conduct. I would not go that far but I do think we can agree that, in addition to rights and utilities, the rules of jus in bello do indeed express and support a vision of the good life and of virtuous conduct in pursuit of its enjoyment. G.S. D avis (1992) used to write about this, and Michael Ignatieff (1997) more recently wrote about the warrior’s honour. Good soldiers do not rape; they do not take aim at civilians; they formulate intelligent battle plans and use their resources wisely; they display courage, focus and strength; they defend the defenceless; they do not resort to torture or treachery to achieve their aims; and they watch each other, leaving no man behind and effectively forming, as they say, a band of brothers. The picture I am urging is this: just war theory should not be seen as reducing to one category or conception of ultimate moral or political value. May’s reductive monism on behalf of virtue misses the mark in this regard as much as Walzer’s monism on behalf of rights. The reality is that there is room enough in the pool for many values, and no logical reason why we are forced to admit that it all reduces to one value. That is a post-Cartesian, reductive, modernist drive. The longer perspective, on the broad sweep of the just war tradition, tells us that the nature of just war theory is that it is a theory of rules – rules for guiding action, rules for aiding understanding – and these rules find their source in several values, drawing upon the sense and strength of different theories of value (which refer to different aspects of the human experience and human aspiration). Let me also point out the problem – noted by many – of self-reference in Walzer if we do take the ultimate nature of just war theory to be a set of side-constraining rights and not that (also) of pleasure-generating utilities. First, as already mentioned, 

The DD E stipulates that an agent A may perform an action X, even though A foresees that X will result in both good (G) and bad (B) effects, provided all of the following criteria are met: (1) X is an otherwise morally permissible action; (2) A only intends G and not B; (3) B is not a means to G; and (4) the goodness of G is worth, or is proportionately greater than, the badness of B. 118

Just War Th eo r y and t h e Et h ic s o f War and Peac e there is the consequentialist flavour of the rules of last resort, probability of success, proportionality and the DD E, all of which Walzer explicitly endorses (see Orend 2000, Ch. 4). More notorious, though, is of course Walzer’s doctrine of the supreme emergency exemption, which is when political communities may set aside the rules of jus in bello – to the point even of deliberately targeting the innocent – in order to prevent themselves from being subject to widespread massacre and/or enslavement at the hands of a remorseless aggressor. According to Walzer, when ‘the very existence of a community is at stake’ then ‘the restraint on utilitarian calculation must be lifted’. Only in such an emergency can ‘an utilitarianism of extremity’ be defended. More generally, he notes, utilitarianism is most effective ‘when it points to outcomes about which we have (relatively) clear ideas. For that reason, it is more likely to tell us that the rules of war should be overridden in this or that case than it is to tell us what the rules are’ (see Walzer 1991, 132, 242–68, Ch. 16). Supreme emergency is a fascinating, complex problem in just war theory, which I have tried to parse elsewhere (2006, Ch. 5). My only point here, which has been made by others, is that if utility is allowed to figure into just war theory – especially at such a consequential moment as called for by the doctrine of the supreme emergency – then strictly by his own terms Walzer’s just war theory cannot entirely or essentially reduce to being a theory of rights. In my view, as we wrestle increasingly with the ethics of war and peace, we need new scholars and philosophers to deal with the thorny, yet inescapable, problem of what ultimate values root the theory, and how best we can justify and support its claims.

Anticipatory Attack, or ‘Pre-Emptive Strike’ T he jus ad bellum problem I have chosen to highlight concerns anticipatory attack. This issue, of course, came to recent prominence in 2003 when America and the UK attacked Iraq. Usually the only justified and legal cause for going to war is thought to be some kind of defence: either self-defence from an armed and aggressive attack by an enemy, or else other-defence of another country – such as an ally – which has been so attacked. Thus many people believe that to be justified in resorting to war at all, you must wait for an attack to occur – and only then may you respond to it (in order to defeat, punish and deter aggression). But can there ever be cases where it is just to be the first to attack? Cases where one can be the first to use armed violence yet not be the aggressor? America and the UK argued so in their 2003 case. Let us consider the ethics of anticipatory attack, turning first to an examination of Walzer’s beliefs. Walzer wants to walk a fine line between two extremes: denying that anticipatory attack by one state on another – or on a non-state actor – is ever justified; and supporting the doctrine of preventive war. A preventive war, as he defines it, is a war prosecuted in the present for the sake of maintaining the future balance of power, itself thought necessary for long-term peace and security. Such wars used to be very frequent in Europe, especially in the eighteenth century. The grounds 119

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns most frequently offered for preventive war are utilitarian – we must war now to avoid future costs and/or gain future benefits. European powers used to do this to prevent any one power from getting too big and threatening. War was, so to speak, a way of taking powers down a peg or two so they would not cause an even bigger war down the road. Walzer believes, soberly, that the calculations required morally to ground preventive war are simply too fantastical to be plausible. We just do not know that much about how the long-term future will unfold. Furthermore, the danger to which preventive war is intended to respond is too distant and speculative. It simply does not seem to justify the certain deaths in the present to go to war based on mere speculation of what another country might be like in, say, 15 years. If any kind of advance action is to be grounded at all, the danger it is aimed at must be imminent, not distant; it must be a threat which is concrete, not merely abstract (see Walzer 1991, 74–80). ‘Anticipatory attack’ denotes an armed attack wherein a state strikes first but does so not out of aims for a distant, future balance of power but rather out of immediate aims to pre-empt an attack it knows is coming in the very near future. This is ‘pre-emptive’ as opposed to ‘preventive’ war (I prefer the term ‘anticipatory attack’ to avoid any confusion between the two). A sufficient threat for justifying an anticipatory attack, Walzer suggests helpfully, is composed of three elements. The first is ‘a manifest intent to injure’, revealed either through a bitter history of conflict between the communities in question, like the Arab/Israeli struggle, or through recent and explicit threats. He suggests that the recipient of a justified anticipatory attack can only be ‘a determined enemy’, one demonstrably committed to doing severe harm to one’s political community. The second element of sufficient threat is ‘a degree of active preparation that makes the intent a positive danger’. Mere malign intent, even given a conflict-ridden history and/or recent hostile declarations is not enough to ground anticipatory strikes. There must also be a measurable military preparation on the part of the proposed recipient of the attack, such as its build-up of offensive forces along the border. Finally, the situation must be one ‘in which waiting, or doing anything other than fighting, greatly magnifies the risk’ of being attacked. Only under all three conditions is an anticipatory attack justified. In general, Walzer suggests, ‘states may use military force in the face of threats of war, whenever the failure to do so would seriously risk their territorial integrity or political independence’. Indeed, he goes so far as to contend that, should State X be faced with these three conditions involving Bellicose State (or Non-State) Actor Y, then Y has already committed aggression against X, and thus X at least has just cause to launch an attack. We now see how for Walzer the actual deployment of force is not a strictly necessary condition for aggression to have occurred. It is no less a violation of state rights to pose ‘a serious risk’ to the political sovereignty and territorial integrity of a legitimate state than it is to launch an armed invasion against it. Though there are obvious and substantial concerns to be raised here, with regard to loosening the concept of aggression, Walzer himself stresses that anticipatory attack can only be truly exceptional, and a very burdensome weight of justification is borne by the attacker to prove with evidence that the three general criteria really do hold in its case (see Walzer 1991, 74–85). 120

Just War Th eo r y and t h e Et h ic s o f War and Peac e In my view the key here is that defence – as in defence from aggression – can be construed either descriptively or normatively. D escriptive defence means one must wait to be attacked empirically, and therefore that one’s use of force comes after that of the aggressor’s. The aggressor attacks, and then one is entitled to use force in reply – like the textbook cases of self-defence. Normative defence, by contrast, means that there might be circumstances where, empirically, one’s use of force can come first against an aggressor. A just war is one which is normatively defensive – it defends people from aggression and seeks in response to resist and repeal it – whereas the tactics which may be employed within the context of such a just war may be either empirically defensive or offensive. Aggression, after all, is defined as the violation of state rights to territory and sovereignty. This violation occurs when a state or non-state actor obviously presents itself as a severe threat to another state and its people. And a state or non-state actor can present itself as such a threat in at least one of two ways: (1) by actually attacking a state without just cause; or (2) by posing a credible, grave and imminent threat based on compelling evidence of launching such an aggressive attack. So a just war of self- or other-defence need not be wholly reactive: there is some room here, I believe, for anticipatory attack as well. The key notion with regard to anticipatory attack is that forcing states to wait for the actual attack despite its evident and imminent coming is not a reasonable insistence. This is especially the case if there are compelling grounds for believing that the coming attack is going to be of considerable destruction. A state would be derelict in its duty to protect its members if it did not reserve the right to make wellgrounded anticipatory attacks in this regard. It is no less a violation of fundamental rights to deliberately pose a credible and imminent severe threat – a clear and present danger – to another person or state. Such a threat interferes with the lives and liberties of states and peoples as readily as does an explicit and actual invasion because it leaves them just waiting for the oncoming attack. The coercive threat functions and is intended to function in the same manner as an actual attack: to bring about the unjust capitulation of the other country or person. From a just war point of view the resort to arms by the victim is hence equally justified in either event. Think of a personal case where an attacker breaks into your home with a gun, and declares repeatedly his intention to kill and rob you. He then releases the safety switch on his gun, leaving him free to fire. It is not unjust in such a case, if one has a gun oneself, to fire at that point: the attacker has violated your space, declared terrible intentions, shows himself capable of realizing them, and then he takes the final step of just leaving you waiting for the act to occur. Given the potentially final consequences of waiting for that act, it seems quite reasonable for you to defend yourself. And it is clearly still defence even though you are the one firing first. An even better analogy representing the state more accurately would be if a police officer happened upon the scene. It is likely that every police force would allow the officer to fire at this point – and probably sooner, at the point when the attacker raises his gun towards you – in defence of your life. The police officer or you fires first but the moral damage and physical danger has first been done by the attacker rendering him open to resistance. You are not creating the menacing conditions 121

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns after all, he is. You are defending yourself from what you have every reason to believe is a credible, grave and imminent threat to your life and rights. Jeff McMahan makes an important point here when he says that even when we go to war in response to an attack which has already occurred, a prime objective in doing so is to prevent even further damage by the attacker. This suggests that the difference between reactive and anticipatory defence is not so rigid or black and white. When we see aggression, we move: (1) to punish it; (2) to resist it in the moment; and (3) to prevent further harm in the future. We can moreover plausibly say that all three are done in defence: defence of values and defence of lives. The just war tradition is admittedly seriously split on this issue. For instance, Francisco de Vitoria, one of the key contributors to the historical evolution of the just war tradition, would disagree with both Walzer and myself here. Vitoria insists that one must wait for the actual attack before one may go to war to fend the aggressor off and punish him. International law for its part seems to concur with Vitoria, at least in the absence of special permission from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Most pre-9/11 writers and international lawyers would be in this camp, exempting Walzer of course. Many of the medieval writers, however, argued strongly in favour of the idea – inspired by Augustine of Hippo – that ‘protection of the innocent’ was a prime purpose of the state and a just cause for war, and they concluded upon reflection that there could be very rare occasion when a first military strike could be consistent with this principle. If a state waits to receive the first strike then some of its civilians will die and it will have failed in its duty to protect them. Post-9/11, and in the era of weapons of mass destruction (WMD ), this view is gathering renewed attention (see Ignatieff 2004). The American government in its 2002 National Security Strategy makes the case that in light of modern terrorism and its objectives of spectacular, hard-to-predict instances of mass civilian slaughter, a responsible government must reserve the right to strike first if such action will most likely prevent such instances from occurring. The document reads: The greater the threat, the greater the risk of inaction – and the more compelling case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act pre-emptively (Bush 2002, 15). It is vital to understand that these considerations do not lighten the justificatory burden of a government making use of first strike. For such a government must then publicly justify its first strike in light of Walzer’s three grounds for anticipatory attack and show, fundamentally, how such action is consistent with its function and duty of



Jeff McMahan, ‘Preventive War’, a chapter in a forthcoming collection on just war theory to be edited by D avid Rodin and published by Oxford University Press. I thank the OUP for the advance reading. 122

Just War Th eo r y and t h e Et h ic s o f War and Peac e protecting its people. Future scholars must consider these competing considerations, understandings and perspectives, as well as the need to weigh what the historical evidence may or may not show about the success of the use of anticipatory attack and whether it ought to be risked or rather put aside until the attack has happened, when debating whether the defensive resort to force is justified.

Torturing Terrorists After a war has begun the next set of issues deals with its conduct: how should soldiers and officers prosecute the war effort? There are legions of difficult ethical dilemmas in this regard. For example, a recent and indeed ongoing dilemma concerns how a belligerent government should treat soldiers and others whom it captures during the war. International law and just war theory stipulate that such captives are owed ‘benevolent quarantine’. ‘Benevolent quarantine’ means that captured enemy soldiers can be stripped of their weapons, incarcerated with their fellows and questioned verbally for information. But they cannot, for instance, be tortured during questioning. Nor can they be beaten, starved or medically experimented on. They cannot be used as shields between the opposing sides and in fact the understanding is that captured enemy soldiers are to be incarcerated far away from the front lines. Very basic medical and hygienic treatment is supposed to be offered and while making captives engage in work projects is permitted, the Geneva Conventions require that in such an event captives be paid a modest salary. I have never heard of that actually happening – the incredible detail of the Geneva Conventions means they do not always get realized – but it is fairly common for combatants to disarm, house and feed their captives, keeping them out of harm’s way and ensuring their basic needs are met until the war ends. When it is all over, they are then usually freed in exchange for prisoners of war on the other side (see Reisman and Antoniou 1994, 35–230). Controversies here focus around when or if aggressive questioning becomes a form of torture, and also around what happens when non-state actors, like terrorists, are taken prisoner. The latter issue concerns whether non-state captives deserve the same quality of treatment as state captives. There is a sense that a soldier fighting for his community somehow deserves better treatment than a terrorist fighting for his cause. I think this distinction can be difficult to sustain and that generally non-state actors brought into capture by soldiers should be accorded the same rights as captured enemy soldiers. If soldiers fighting for an unjust cause deserve this treatment then surely so 

I agree with Ignatieff (2004) that the post-9/11 era is one where anticipatory attacks might be more permissible but I disagree with him when he says Walzer’s criteria are out of date. I always hesitate to agree when people talk about the ‘dawn of a new age’, and so on, and the need for completely different principles. Such declarations are too often proven hasty and false. These principles have stood the test of time and can be incorporated into the new risk context. 123

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns do terrorists – whose method if not the cause is likewise unjust. In other words if it is wrong to torture Nazi soldiers – whose cause was heinous and irredeemable – then it is wrong to torture radical Islamic terrorists (much less mere suspects). This topic has recently been highlighted regarding America’s round-up of alleged terrorists, who in some cases are still being held for intensive questioning in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Very recently the US Supreme Court sided with this theory, declaring illegal the Bush Administration’s policy of viewing suspected terrorist detainees as ‘nonlawful combatants’ who do not deserve the protection of the Geneva Conventions. In response, President Bush announced his intention to close the questioning facilities in Guantanamo. He also admitted at the same time that America did indeed have secret prisons around the world in use for very aggressive questioning of terror suspects by the CIA. These, we were told, are now to be closed, too. The incidents in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq also come to mind. In the late spring of 2004 the world saw some shocking photos of American troop conduct in that jail. Iraqi prisoners – captured during the war and the subsequent insurgency – were subjected to highly questionable treatment. Some of it, such as deliberate, prolonged sleep deprivation, and using dogs to attack or threaten already prone and naked people, clearly violated the Geneva Conventions. Others might have been visually disturbing but do not obviously count as human rights violations, such as forcing the prisoners to wear dog collars, having American women ridicule their private parts, or putting female panties on their faces temporarily. Combine it all though and there is a clear violation of both the letter and the spirit of the principle of benevolent quarantine. Some of the US soldiers involved have since been charged, tried and sentenced – which again shows official American acceptance of the idea that non-state captives deserve the same treatment as state captives (see Hersh 2004; D anner 2004). I suppose we might condone some efforts at psychological pressure – mocking, aggressive cross-examination, ridiculing, criticizing, and so on – when the goal is getting information which might save innocent lives. Questioning is, after all, permitted under the Geneva Conventions. But the infliction of physical harm cannot be, even if it supposedly serves the questioning process and is glamourized by such television shows as 24. Why? Because it is impossible to square the infliction of physical harm with the concept of benevolent quarantine. Benevolent quarantine may not mean actually being nice to your prisoners but it certainly cannot logically include things the Geneva Conventions define as torture: prolonged sleep deprivation; starvation; slapping, punching, biting or strangling; the breaking or severing of limbs or digits; urging or allowing an animal to attack; any kind of drowning-based, or electrocutionbased, session; sexual assault or rape; poisoning or medical experimentation; shooting of a non-essential body part; and so on. These things are simply prohibited. Not even war – not even a just war – can justify the deliberate infliction of such things upon other human beings, even if such people are suspected or even guilty of terrible 

For further discussion see Saar (2005) and Ratner and Ray (2004). Supreme Court decision to be found at . Bush statement to be found at . 124

Just War Th eo r y and t h e Et h ic s o f War and Peac e things themselves. In domestic society, for example, we do not permit prison guards to torture anyone – even those convicted of the very worst crimes. So why should we allow it in international society? The thing to do with terrorist suspects is to question them within the rules and then prosecute them for war crimes and, upon conviction, send them to jail – not to strip them, beat them and set dogs upon them. Such activities arguably are not only unjust but against the very self-perception of being ‘civilized’ on the part of the forces and countries engaged in these activities. The forces of civilization must remain civilized even as they confront ruthless barbarism (see D ershowitz 2003). What about those who might argue that, as distasteful as these methods are, America’s use of them has probably prevented another 9/11? What if it is a harsh truth about reality that this kind of rough treatment nevertheless gets highly desirable results? The problem with this suggestion is that it is speculative and may be totally mistaken as to why America has not suffered another 9/11. After all, America is doing many things other than torture to try and prevent another 9/11: new security policies at airports; more and better trained police, military and intelligence officers; entire new bureaucracies devoted to ensuring national security; aggressive war actions forcing regime changes in Iraq and Afghanistan; much tighter cooperation with international allies like the UK and Canada regarding information-sharing, police investigation, border control, and so on. It could just as well be true that it is all of these things which have succeeded in so far preventing another 9/11, and the torturing of suspects has had nothing to do with it at all. As important as it is to prevent future terrorist attacks, and to protect innocent lives, torture is universally agreed to be one of the very worst things a person can do. Torture is everywhere banned in the laws of war and human rights law (see Reisman and Antoniou 2004, 153–393; Brownlie 1995, 255–388). Torture causes revulsion and disgust, as we saw in worldwide reaction to the Abu Ghraib photos. It inflicts absolutely devastating pain upon the tortured, who must endure not only the raw pain of the act(s) but also the experience and knowledge of being utterly enslaved to the whims of another. Torture inflicts severe pain, combines slavery with violence, disregards human autonomy and even renders the torturer worse off. It is, as a method, intrinsically corrupt and even evil. Moreover torture is extremely questionable as an information-gathering device because evidence shows that people will say anything – even deny things they know are true and assert things they know are false – just to get the torture to stop. Torture is not the answer to terrorism – it is capitulation to a world of brutality and barbarism, a world where the terrorist already resides. I am not saying torture and terrorism are morally equivalent; presumably torture is more discriminating and localized than terrorism. What I am saying is that as methods they are both always wrong and ultimately indefensible regardless of the cause they supposedly serve (see Innes 1998; Glover 2001). The fact that the government of one of the world’s leading and most developed societies has come so close to employing torture so recently is cause for great concern and surely should spur further work on the nature and place of torture in international affairs.

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Forcing Post-War Regime Change Post-war regime change is an issue of great controversy and vital import, not just because of the ongoing post-war reconstruction experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq. In this section I argue for the permissibility of coercive post-war regime change, under certain circumstances. While this stance obviously is controversial, it is hoped that the claims made here will spark further debate about this timely topic. The goal of justified post-war regime change – that is, of coercive rehabilitation of a defeated aggressor – is the timely construction of a minimally just political community. All warfare ultimately is about the governance of a territory, and so all the deepest questions of war must revolve around issues of authority and legitimacy: who gets to govern a population within a territory, and how ought they to do so? I submit that a minimally just community makes every reasonable effort to: (1) avoid violating the rights of other minimally just communities; (2) gain recognition as being legitimate in the eyes of the international community and its own people; and (3) realize the human rights of all its individual members. Since the imposition by force of any standard in the post-war environment is such serious and controversial business, a justification needs to be provided. Here, only an overview can be offered. The ideal of a human rights-respecting, minimally just political community is a justified one because: • • • • • • •

it is in every individual’s self-interest; it respects everyone’s potential for autonomy and self-direction; it thus has universal appeal; it already enjoys very strong international consensus; it is based on thin, reasonable and accessible values such as living a minimally good life; it generates good consequences, especially in terms of average quality of life; it promotes long-term international peace and stability.

It is these values – their strength and moral resonance – which ground regimechanging measures in a post-war environment. These are not extreme, narrow, ‘crusading’ or ‘imperialistic’ values – they are modest, secular, widely accepted and based on appeal to the first principle of respecting individual rights, as well as to after-the-fact considerations of generating concrete beneficial consequences for everyone. Moreover, successful coercive post-war regime change along these lines was actually done in Germany and Japan (1945–55), and so it is neither conceptually nor empirically impossible (see D avidson 1999; Schonberg 1989). In fact, a review of the literature shows something of an ideal ten-point recipe for transforming a defeated aggressor into a minimally just regime. Before discussing the recipe, it must be said that regimes which are not minimally just have no right to govern, and so are in no position to complain should they be 

For further discussion see Orend (2006, 160–219) and especially D obbins et al. (2003; 2004). 126

Just War Th eo r y and t h e Et h ic s o f War and Peac e overthrown. But what about the right of the people living under such regimes to be self-governing? National self-determination, I submit, is not an end in itself; it is good only insofar as it results in a minimally just society. A people never has the right to establish an aggressive or human rights-violating regime, any more than a crook has the right to beat up people as a form of his ‘freedom of expression’. We can imagine cases – indeed know of cases – where a people lacks the means for constructing a minimally just society. Perhaps they lack the resources and expertise, are deeply divided, have been exhausted by war, or refuse to do so out of blinkered nationalism or ideology. In all these cases, they can justly be forced to accept a new, minimally just regime in the post-war period provided the war was just. If the war was not just, they can not be so forced but they certainly should be offered help if it is freely requested. Owing to the power of the idea of a minimally just political community, we should not be surprised to see locals clamouring for this option for help. The new regime must then eventually get endorsement and show its local legitimacy – ideally through direct election – and then that effectively cements its right to govern. If the locals still do not like it, they can remove the government and start again – but always within the confines of minimal justice. Thus, forcible post-war regime change is permissible provided: (1) the war itself was just and conducted properly; (2) the target regime was illegitimate, thereby forfeiting its state rights; (3) the goal of the reconstruction is a minimally just regime; and (4) respect for jus in bello and human rights is integral to the transformation process itself. The permission is then granted because: (1) the transformation violates neither state nor human rights; (2) the transformation’s expected consequences are very desirable, namely, satisfied human rights for the local population and increased international peace and security; and (3) the post-war moment is especially promising regarding the possibilities for reform. And the transformation will be successful when there is: (1) a stable new regime; (2) run entirely by locals; which is (3) minimally just. The 2003 D obbins Report, one of the first-ever extensive empirical considerations of recent post-war reconstructions suggests that this kind of success probably takes from seven to ten years to achieve. We now know the goal – a minimally just society – and so we now ask: what is the process for achieving it? Here is the historically grounded recipe: 1. Adhere diligently to the laws of war during the regime takedown and occupation. This is morally vital for its own sake, as well as to help win the hearts and minds of the locals and to establish the legitimacy of the occupation. (The US, of course, has notoriously run afoul of this principle in Iraq, owing to the prisoner abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison.) 2. Purge much of the old regime and prosecute its war criminals. Note that I have said much, but not necessarily all. Clearly, anyone materially connected to aggression, tyranny or atrocity cannot be permitted a substantial role in the new order. They have lost the right to govern. But others – say, middle-ranking civil servants – might be kept on for their local knowledge and bureaucratic expertise. There always needs to be some continuity, even in the face of a radical change in institutions. 127

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns 3. Disarm and demilitarize the society. The target military does need to be disarmed and demobilized, but then something needs to be done with them. Many critics of the US occupation of Iraq argue that a key decision which helped spark the ongoing insurgency was the US choice to promptly disband the 400,000-strong Iraqi army and then leave them to their own devices. Plans for employing these potentially dangerous men, providing them opportunity, should have been developed. Some of them – not so much the officer class as ordinary soldiers – might even be selectively remobilized under a reconstituted command structure. This might actually add some desperately needed stability to the situation (see ICISS 2001, 40–41; Annan 1998). 4. Provide effective military and police security for the whole country. Most experts suggest a two-stage approach here: the initial successful ‘attack and overthrow’ war divisions should be replaced by other divisions specifically trained in postcombat peacekeeping and nation-building. Whether this latter force should be multinational or UN-led is taken up below, but the transition should be as seamless as possible and the ratios are crucial. The nation-building research shows that about 20 soldiers per 1,000 residents are needed to stabilize and secure post-war populations. (Incidentally, both the Afghanistan and Iraq occupation forces are, as of writing, well short of this ratio.) The idea is to go in with abundant military personnel properly trained in stability operations, showing the locals strong intentions to protect them and providing a secure backdrop for the development of law and legitimacy, to say nothing of the economy and the rebirth of a peaceful and regular pace of life (see Traub 2004, 36). 5. Work with a cross-section of locals on a new, rights-respecting constitution which features checks and balances. Limited government is required to prevent regrowth of tyranny; legitimate government is needed both for moral fitness and for stability. The picture here is of a genuine political partnership between the war-winner and the local civilian population. The facts show that the meaningful participation and support of both is absolutely necessary, and usually more extensive international participation is desirable as well. Constitution-making is a process and so we can not rationally expect perfection or closure in the first instance. Even the most developed societies occasionally change their constitutions or take several tries before creating a workable one in the first place. Although the post-war atmosphere is pressured and there is a desire to rapidly end foreign occupation, some patience is required on the part of all participants in the exercise. In terms of inclusion in the constitutionbuilding process, Andrew Arato (2000; 2004) reminds us that every group must be included, especially those whose non-participation could ruin any subsequent arrangement and those who are committed to the creation of a minimally just state. If these two conditions are met all relevant groups, as guided by the war-winner, are to develop an inclusive framework for limited, accountable and rights-respecting government. Unlike the security situation, there has been some clear progress here on the fronts of constitutions and elections both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Just War Th eo r y and t h e Et h ic s o f War and Peac e 6. Allow other non-state associations or ‘civil society’ to flourish. Civil society associations refer to all groupings which do not involve the state. Research stresses how important such associations are, not only to enjoyment of life but also to people’s commitment to their society. These groupings connect people to each other, provide satisfaction and promote non-political aspects of life. They serve to take pressure off the state by providing diverse outlets for energy and, indeed, by helping to provide resources and assistance to their members, they help to legitimize the society by increasing participation and happiness, and they also indirectly limit state power by showing there is more to life than politics. It is always the mark of a tyrannical government when there is little activity within civil society. Robust civil societies are thus an important ingredient in creating mature, legitimate social conditions. 7. Forego compensation and sanctions in favour of investing in and rebuilding the economy. Many modern peace arrangements – notably the Treaty of Versailles and the terms ending the Persian Gulf War – unravelled or created perverse consequences when they included hefty compensation terms and sweeping sanctions. Targeted compensation might still be justified but beyond that and war crimes trials, punitive settlements do not seem to work. The goal of proper regime change is the creation of a stable, minimally just social condition. This is difficult enough as it is; trying to achieve it while taking resources out of the target country becomes nearly impossible. This need for funds is a strong argument for including international partners in reconstruction. Realistically speaking though, such partners will probably volunteer their resources only if they believe the war was justified to begin with. 8. If necessary, revamp educational curricula to purge past propaganda and cement new values. The fascists in the 1930s used school systems to indoctrinate future citizens so that they would subscribe to highly destructive doctrines of racial and national supremacy, with the consequence being hatred and aggression against ‘others’. In a modern example, Afghanistan under the Taliban and elsewhere still in the Middle East, great controversy attaches to the teaching of Islamic extremism and its attitudes towards violence, Israel, the West and women in particular. Much development research powerfully shows the beneficial effects of massive commitment to the education of girls and women. Indeed, some have even pronounced this one of the few ‘silver bullets’ in development, which correlates very strongly with such other desirable social outcomes as economic growth, life expectancy and internal political stability. 9. Ensure that the benefits of the new order will be concrete and widely distributed. As Michael Walzer (2004, 164–5) suggests, it is necessary to increase everyone’s stake in the new, developing order. In particular, a situation must be avoided where it seems that the foreign occupier is favouring one group above the rest, giving 

In particular, see Nussbaum (2004) and also the website <www.unicef.org/girlseducation/ index.html>. 129

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns that group most of the power. That group given power will soon be marked as traitors and foreign agents, and will lose legitimacy and popular support. This was frequently the case during the European colonial era – particularly with France and Belgium – when the colonizer would select an elite group to rule, creating bitter ethnic and communal rivalries which persist today. The reconstructions of Germany and Japan showed, by contrast, that there must be widespread concrete benefits distributed throughout the population to make reconstruction work: political goods such as getting to vote and run for office where you could not before; civic goods like having your daughter go to school where before she could not; social goods like starting up reading clubs where they used to be banned; and above all, economic goods like an average rise in living standards within a reasonable time. In both Afghanistan and Iraq there is a lack of sense thus far that people’s lives are concretely better off than before the wars, and there are serious disputes over fair shares of resources and who should end up getting what. Of overriding concern, in both societies, are widespread physical security from violence and widespread increase in average living standards. 10. Follow an orderly, not-too-hasty exit strategy when the new regime can stand alone. This last point requires walking a fine line. On the one hand, the foreign occupier can not stay forever – for that is conquest, not reconstruction. The locals must see that occupation will come to an end and their country will return to full sovereignty. This knowledge should diffuse some tension and help spur the locals to stand up and take some responsibility for the future shape of their own society. On the other hand, if a state (or group of states) is going to do something as important as post-war rehabilitation, it should try to do it well. In addition, there is a moral responsibility not to ‘cut and run’. A botched reconstruction benefits no one, including impatient locals. This ten-point recipe for reconstruction is only a general blueprint; clearly in particular cases some things will need to be emphasized over others. The best recipes always allow for individual variance and input depending on time and the ingredients at hand. We should also note the heavy interconnectedness of many of these elements. Further, in spite of the variances among aggressive, rightsviolating societies – different geography, history, language, economy, diet, ethnic composition – there has been striking similarity in the kind of regime here in view. Think of the major twentieth-century aggressors and dictatorships: the USSR; Fascist Spain and Italy; Nazi Germany; Imperial Japan; North Korea; Communist China; Pol Pot’s Cambodia; Idi Amin’s Uganda; Saddam Hussein’s Iraq; the Taliban’s Afghanistan. In spite of all the differences among them, the regimes shared large affinities: a small group of ruthless fanatics uses force to come to power; it keeps power through the widespread use of violence, both internally and externally; it engages in massively invasive control over every major sphere of life, with no other associations allowed to rival the state’s prestige; the rule of law is jettisoned; the military or ‘in-party’ becomes all-important; human rights are trampled upon, and so on. To a remarkable extent, in spite of all the other differences, they have all been the same kind of regime. And this should not, in the end, come as much of 130

Just War Th eo r y and t h e Et h ic s o f War and Peac e a surprise: they all learned from each other and sought to emulate what worked elsewhere. The modern police state only has so many precedents to draw upon, and might in fact be located ultimately in such early examples as Napoleonic France, or most probably Robespierre’s Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. So, then, we should not be all that shocked, surprised and sceptical if it turns out that one general recipe can, in fact, be found for transforming such regimes and societies away from rampant rights violation into ones which are at least minimally just.

References Annan, K. (1998). ‘The Causes of Conflict and the Promotion of D urable Peace and Sustainable D evelopment in Africa: Report of the United Nations SecretaryGeneral to the Security Council’, in United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service (ed.), Conflict, Peace and Reconstruction (Geneva: NGLS). Arato, A. (2000), Civil Society, Constitution and Legitimacy (Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield). — (2004), ‘Constitution-Making in Iraq’, Dissent 51:2, 21–8. Brownlie, I. (ed.) (1995), Basic Documents in International Law, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Bush, G.W. (2002), The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, D C: The White House), <www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf>. D anner, M. (2004), Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror (New York: New York Review of Books). D avidson, E. (1999), The Death and Life of Germany: An Account of the American Occupation (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press). D avis, G.S. (1992), Warcraft and the Fragility of Virtue (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press). D ershowitz, A. (2003), Why Terrorism Works (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). D obbins, J., et al. (2003), America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: Rand). — (2004), The UN’s Role in Nation-Building: From the Congo to Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: Rand). Glover, J. (2001), Humanity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Hersh, S. (2004), Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (New York: HarperCollins). Ignatieff, M. (1997), The Warrior’s Honor (New York: D oubleday). — (2004), The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Innes, B. (1998), The History of Torture (New York: St Martin’s Press). 

Thanks to Patrick Hayden for patient guidance and for putting up with delays in the crafting of this argument. 131

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) (2001), The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa: International D evelopment Research Centre). May, L. (2007), War Crimes and Just War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Nagel, T. (1971), ‘War and Massacre’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1:2, 123–44. Nussbaum, M.C. (2004), Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (New York: Cambridge University Press). Orend, B. (2000), Michael Walzer on War and Justice (Cardiff: University of Wales Press). — (2006), The Morality of War (Peterborough: Broadview Press). Ratner, M., and Ray, E. (2004), Guantanamo: What The World Should Know (New York: Chelsea Green). Reisman, M., and Antoniou, C. (eds) (1994), The Laws of Armed Conflict (New York: Vintage). Saar, E. (2005), Inside the Wire (New York: Penguin). Schonberg, H. (1989), Aftermath of War: Americans and the Remaking of Japan (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press). Traub, J. (2004), ‘Making Sense of the Mission’, New York Times Magazine 11 April, 36. Walzer, M. (1979), ‘The Moral Standing of States: A Response to Four Critics’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 9:3, 209–29. — (1987), Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). — (1991), Just and Unjust Wars, 2nd edn (New York, Basic Books). — (2004), Arguing About War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press).

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8 Humanitarian Intervention Anthony F. Lang, Jr

Humanitarian intervention (HI) is the use of military forces to provide aid, ensure the protection of rights, and/or enforce a peace settlement without the express permission of the political authority of the state in which the intervention occurs. As this chapter will demonstrate, HI reveals some important ethical dilemmas in international relations. At one level, HIs appear to be morally unproblematic for they provide economic and political goods in situations of humanitarian emergency. At another level, however, HIs generate a great deal of controversy; by overriding the authority structure of a state, an HI vitiates self-determination and sovereignty, the fundamental normative structures of the current international order. As a result, HIs highlight the difficulty of doing what is ‘right’ in an international system where state leaders define their own legal, political and ethical orders. This chapter provides an overview of HI by focusing on three issues. First, HI constitutes and is constituted by the international political society within which it takes place. This constitutive nature of HI can be seen by the varying ways in which not only HI but any military intervention is defined, definitions that do not simply reflect reality but arise from larger international normative structures. Second, debates about whether an intervention is humanitarian or not often revolves around a determination of the motives of the interveners. This chapter argues that this approach conflates motives and intentions, and in so doing, limits the evaluation of such actions. Instead, evaluations of interventions ought to be based on intentions, a concept that differs from motives in important ways, and also provides a means to link actions to outcomes. Third, recent international proposals concerning HI reflect a tension between those who see HI as subject to international legal rules and those who see it as a political and/or ethical judgment made in context specific situations. The 2001 Responsibility to Protect doctrine demonstrates the difficulty of negotiating whether or not HI should be governed by strict criteria or left up to the wisdom of a political body like the UN Security Council. The concluding section examines these issues through a review of one particular intervention, the attempt to resolve ethnic conflict in Sudan.

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns

Humanitarian Intervention as a Constitutive Practice To intervene has a meaning outside of international affairs as it relates to interpersonal relations – involvement in the affairs of others without their consent. This basic definition can have both positive and negative valences; positive if intervention is designed to help and negative if it is undertaken to harm. D ilemmas at the interpersonal level arise when an intervention designed to help an individual is not necessarily the kind of help she wants. So, for instance, a family may ‘intervene’ with someone who is an alcoholic to change her behaviour, an intervention she may resist. At the same time, such interventions may result from reasons that are not purely altruistic, such as embarrassment about that individual. An even more complicated situation, and one that relates more directly to debates about defining HI, is when individuals differ about how to define an alcoholic. Appeals to medical definitions of alcoholism may well help clarify the situation, but they will not necessarily resolve it. In the same way, the policies being undertaken in a particular state that might prompt a military intervention may well result from differing interpretations of what constitutes human rights abuses, civil war, or even genocide. Appeals to international legal definitions of these practices might help clarify what distinguishes a HI from other forms of intervention, but they will not necessarily resolve those dilemmas. This also suggests that stipulating a definition of HI at the outset of this chapter may not capture the normative tensions that surround it. As a result, this section reviews some definitions of HI but, in so doing, points to how those definitions raise more complex issues of international ethics. Terry Nardin defines intervention as ‘the exercise of authority by one state within the jurisdiction of another state, but without its permission.’ Intervention is humanitarian when ‘its aim is to protect innocent people who are not nationals of the intervening state from violence perpetrated or permitted by the government of the target state’ (Nardin and Williams 2006, 1). Jeff Holzgrefe argues that it is ‘the threat or use of force across state borders by a state (or group of states) aimed at preventing or ending widespread and grave violations of the fundamental human rights of individuals other than its own citizens, without the permission of the state within whose territory force is applied’ (Holzgrefe and Keohane 2003, 18). Other definitions can be found, but they tend to express roughly the same ideas as Nardin and Holzgrefe. Yet the attempt to clearly define HI in these ways occludes the complex interplay of ethics and politics that informs our understandings of this term at different points in time. Intervention as a distinct practice in international affairs did not exist until there was a state into which military troops could be interjected (Lang 2003a, 1–10). This means that the concept of intervention makes little sense prior to the emergence of the sovereign state system, or Westphalian order, that emerged in the late seventeenth century. To say, for instance, that the Romans ‘intervened’ in Gaul under Julius Caesar makes little sense, for a sovereign state system did not yet exist. A political order did, of course, exist, but it was not constituted by territorially defined political structures in which a single authority was considered 134

Humanit ar ian Int er vent io n sovereign. This political context did begin to develop in the late medieval period. As it did, theorists of war and peace began to write about the contexts in which the use of force might be used for what we would today consider to be humanitarian purposes. For instance, the fifteenth-century theologian Francisco Vitoria made the argument that kings might use military force in order to punish other kings who had violated the rights of their subjects (1991). Within the just war tradition these ideas were refined and developed, culminating in the work of the seventeenth-century theologian and lawyer Hugo Grotius who argued that military force can be used to defend the helpless and punish those who violate the rights of others (2005). Neither theorist used the word intervention to explain these kinds of actions, much less humanitarian, but they were analysing situations that have some parallels with modern debates about HI. As the sovereign state system developed, however, intervention of any kind came to be understood as more of a problem than a help to the suffering of others. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, positivist international law grew in importance, creating an international normative order that privileged the state as the vehicle most centrally concerned with the good life. As international law developed during the nineteenth century, intervention became progressively illegal, for to violate the boundaries of the sovereign state was to violate the international order. As John Vincent pointed out, non-intervention came to be seen as a defining principle of international society, one that he argued continued to define the twentieth-century international order (1974). John Stuart Mill, in his short magazine article, ‘A Few Words on NonIntervention’ (1859), demonstrates the way this emerging moral and political order was sustained by the principle of non-intervention. Mill, the nineteenth-century utilitarian philosopher and political theorist, begins his article by critiquing the ‘realist’ claim that intervention should only be undertaken for national self-interest. One might imagine, then, he would conclude with an argument for intervention in cases where a people are suffering from oppression. Instead he argues that such intervention is only allowed if those oppressing a population come from outside its territory; that is, are ‘foreigners’. Based on Mill’s claims here, we can assume that at this stage a clear conception of the state as the means by which ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’ is to be understood had solidified in the minds of European intellectuals and political actors. To intervene in this context meant undermining the normative structure of the European order, and so should be seen as morally wrong. This account of how intervention was understood reflects the European experience of the nineteenth century. At the same time, it elides the ways in which interventions were undertaken in numerous contexts within imperial structures. Mill’s article also reflects this tension. Although he concludes that interventions should not take place among ‘Christian’ nations, he is quite clear that intervention is necessary between imperial powers and their dominions. Allowing intervention  

See Bellamy (2006) for a useful summary of the tradition, including the role of early figures such as Vitoria and Grotius. See Jahn (2006) for an insightful reading of this text by Mill. 135

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns in this imperial context while forbidding it in the European context results from the different international societies that were in existence at this time, a difference defined in large part by assumptions about moral progress and race: To suppose that the same international customs, and the same international rules of morality, can obtain between one civilized nation and another and between civilized nations and barbarians, is a grave error into which no statesman can fall into … [Barbarians] cannot be depended on for observing any rules. Their minds are not capable of so great an effort (ibid., 4). Nor was this imperialist understanding of intervention confined to philosophers. The British and French undertook a wide range of military actions throughout this period that were premised on controlling populations attempting to assert their independence or even limited political control. The British use of military force to quell the Orabi political movement in Egypt in the late nineteenth century is a classic example of such action. This action is not called an intervention because the political context in which it takes place is not one defined by two sovereign states in opposition to each other; rather, the British had a position of semi-authority in Egypt at the time, providing them with the legitimacy (from the European perspective) to act militarily when the members of the Egyptian military and political elite sought to oust what they felt were corrupt rulers (Cole 1999). The difference between a European context in which non-intervention defined the political context and the colonial one in which intervention was necessary to sustaining that context demonstrates the constitutive nature of this practice. In one context, the European one, intervention is a form of interference, for those against which it is undertaken consider themselves to be agents who can make decisions about their political future. At the same time, the European perception of those who do not count as legitimate ‘agents’ constructs a particular imperial order in which hierarchical structures privilege some over others. Intervention plays a key role in constituting this nineteenth-century political order, one in which Europe is a place of international legal order and the remainder of the world is a place of imperial conquest and control. The relationship of HI to larger issues in the international political order can be found in the twentieth century as well. Positivist social scientists believe that such contextual factors have little role in defining a concept like HI. And yet, if we look at acontextual attempts to define HI, we see the same issues emerging. For instance, James Rosenau claimed that HI should be defined by what he called its ‘observable characteristics’ that would allow the concept to be ‘operationalized’ for future research (1969). Rosenau’s definition, however, was prompted in part by the need to clarify how the US military action in Vietnam was to be understood. If it was seen as a war, then certain categories should be applied for understanding it. But if, as US policy-makers argued, it was a military intervention in support of an oppressed population trying to resist a military aggression from a neighbour, then it could be seen as a HI. One could read into this debate about Vietnam something akin to Mill’s bifurcated understanding of intervention. If all sovereign states are 136

Humanit ar ian Int er vent io n considered equal and inviolable, then US action in Vietnam was unjust. But if not all states are equal and some cannot protect themselves, they can be justly subject to intervention. Rosenau does not explore all this in his article, but pointing to this background political and normative context gives us a better critical purchase on attempts to define clearly what constitutes intervention by simply looking to ‘observed characteristics’. Current international legal scholarship on intervention also reflects some of these tensions. The standard legal account privileges state sovereignty, making any form of intervention a serious wrong. Louis Henkin has pointed out that almost any action undertaken by one state in its relations with another could be considered a form of intervention. No single rule or definition has become the norm in international legal discourse, perhaps because, as Henkin notes, many states do not want to limit their ability to engage in such actions (1993, 868–70). The closest to a definition that Henkin provides is a ‘violation of a state’s sovereignty’, suggesting that intervention should be understood primarily as a violation of a normative structure. In other words, a legal definition of intervention is inherently ethical. As Henkin notes, most international legal definitions give a negative valence to this definition, allowing it only under specially defined circumstances. With the emergence of human rights as part of international law, however, and the corresponding attempts by states to engage in military action to protect those rights, intervention lost its overtly negative meaning and came to be understood as a positive action, that is, HI. Fernando Tesón wrote one of the first books on HI in terms of international legal theory, one that argued the international state system with its emphasis on sovereignty prevents legal theorists from seeing the need for intervention in situations of human rights violations (1988). The intervention in Somalia in 1992–93 seemed to embody this shift as a military action was undertaken to protect food supplies and promote reconciliation among warring clans (see Lang 2002, 155–86, for an overview). The collapse of the intervention in October 1993 as a result of attacks on US soldiers engaged in attempts to capture one of the warlords soured some, but the discourse promoting intervention for peacekeeping purposes took on new life as UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali articulated it in his 1993 Agenda for Peace (1993). Tasked by the Security Council to propose new ways of understanding security in the post-Cold War order, Boutros-Ghali pushed the traditional UN conception of peacekeeping toward the much more assertive idea of peace enforcement, proposing the use of military forces to protect human rights or stop conflict, which might mean taking sides in a particular conflict. As this new doctrine of HI became more widely accepted in the international system, it soon became clear that it reflected the same tensions found in Mill’s dual understanding of the term. Anne Orford has recently examined HI in the context of the Australian-led intervention in East Timor. In her critical account of this and surrounding discourses, Orford concludes that HI has helped to construct an international order in which some states control the system by drawing on discourses of ‘failed states’ (2003). This new political order allows for peacebuilding and/or statebuilding exercises in which elites from the UN and other international organizations step in to govern a political community. Interventions in Cambodia 137

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns in 1993 and Afghanistan in 2002 provide examples of this more assertive UN role. Some have pointed to the parallels of these new UN-led interventions as evidence of a neo-trusteeship emerging in the international order (Bain 2003). As these militaryled statebuilding interventions have increased in frequency, some have begun to question their positive moral valence. D avid Chandler has been a leading proponent of this critical inquiry into the value of these HIs, arguing that they are preventing political actors in local contexts from resolving their own problems (2002). In 2007, Chandler launched a new journal, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, designed to provide more space for critical inquiry into this kind of work. This section has demonstrated, however, that while we can move toward some clarity about what HI means, it is important to keep in mind how its meaning arises from and is shaped by a wider set of political and moral dynamics that shape the international system as a whole. Martha Finnemore has also made this point in her review of different meanings of intervention from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries (2003). The point to emphasize is that while we can move toward clearer meanings about intervention and HI more particularly, we should not forget that these definitions are constituted by the international order from which they arise.

Motives and Intentions D ebates about whether or an intervention is ‘truly’ humanitarian often revolve around the claim that the intervening powers – usually great powers – are actually intervening for the ‘wrong reasons’. When it is discovered that an intervention may have been undertaken because the leading state has certain interests in the place where the intervention occurs, these interests somehow sully the intervention such that it cannot be considered truly humanitarian. This debate about motives is not confined to the popular press. Both realists (Gray 2001) and critical theorists (Booth 2001) argue that intervention is motivated by a desire for power, land, money, and so on, rather than doing anything that might be considered morally justified. The difference between the two critiques is that the realist will argue that HI should be avoided as a result of this hypocrisy, while the critical theorist will argue that new security structures and institutions need to be created that will mitigate the influence of the hypocritical great powers. This particular form of criticism results, in part, from a confusion about the difference between motives and intentions. This confusion, furthermore, results not from a simple misunderstanding of meaning but from the very structures of modern social scientific inquiry. That is to say, those who write and think about international relations in the academic world tend to adopt the positivist methodological assumption that distinguishes explanatory claims from evaluative claims. In so doing, such theorists look to those factors that will explain an event or series of events, factors that can be ‘observed’ in some way. As well, the tendency in political science and international affairs more broadly has been to dismiss any ‘reasons’ that actors might give for their actions and instead look for the ‘causes’. 138

Humanit ar ian Int er vent io n As Peter Winch so famously argued, however, to avoid reasons for actions is to avoid understanding the practices of politics and society as they are understood by those engaged in such actions themselves (1958). A review of foreign policy analysis literature as it relates to HI demonstrates this point. As with any foreign or defence policy, explanations of HI fall into three levels of analysis: the individual, the state and the system (Waltz 1959). Some explain HIs as resulting from the emotional response that individual leaders have to scenes of devastation, civil conflict or suffering. Evidence suggests George H.W. Bush initiated the intervention in Somalia in 1992 as a result of reports from the New York Times and diplomatic cables in the summer of 1992 that focused on the starvation of children and the ways in which warlords were using food aid as a political weapon (Lang 2002, 164–5). To describe such interventions as HI then assumes that the motives of the leaders are central to our evaluations of those actions. In other words, if it was discovered that the Bush administration undertook the Somali intervention not because the president believed it was morally obligatory to do so, but because he believed it was in the national interests of the US to retain a military foothold on the horn of Africa (considering its proximity to Saudi Arabia), then our evaluation of that intervention might no longer be described as humanitarian but might be better categorized as strategic. The second level of explanation focuses on the state rather than the individual leader. This might mean focusing on how a state’s culture, political system or even bureaucracy determined its decision to undertake a HI. Most often, the explanations of HI at the second level focus on ideology, arguing that states undertaking HI are really in the business of trying to dominate the international system in order to advance a particular political agenda. Critics of HI and its surrounding moral discourse, such as Noam Chomsky and D avid Chandler, focus on this kind of explanatory account. Chandler has argued that the growth in international intervention to support human rights claims has resulted from a combination of the UK’s ‘ethical foreign policy’ agenda coupled with US attempts to control the international political order (2002). Chomsky claims that any intervention undertaken for humanitarian purposes is simply a lie, one that is in fact being undertaken to support and sustain international structures that favour wealthy corporations. In fact, he entitles one chapter of his book on Kosovo ‘Assessing Humanitarian Intent’ (1999, 38–80); the bulk of that chapter is devoted to critiquing the motives of the US and UK concerning HI. Chomsky’s argument is that the motives of the interveners cannot truly be humanitarian for they do not intervene in other contexts where similar humanitarian emergencies exist. The final level of analysis is the systemic one. This type of explanation focuses on the interactions of agents at the international level, interactions which are determined by the structure of the system, geographic location of the different states, or structural economic forces. These kinds of explanations of intervention and HI are more rare, although some do exist (Feste 2003). Of the three kinds of explanations for intervention and HI, this one does not focus on the motives of the leaders, for the assumption is that their actions are largely determined by the structures within which they are forced to operate. Nor are these structures the 139

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns leaders can really change, such as their internal political structures, but larger international structural forces such as the sovereign state system or global economic processes. Stephen Krasner’s argument that sovereignty is a form of ‘organized hypocrisy’ demonstrates how a systemic level explanation produces theoretical explanations that seem to avoid ethics but actually assume them (1999). According to Krasner, the assumption that sovereignty is a defining feature of the international is undermined by the frequent practice of intervention. Krasner argues that normative structures as such do not really exist, and that international politics can be determined by the pursuit of material interests in situations of anarchy. Following from this point, no state would ever engage in a HI, for to do so would undermine its security in an anarchic order. Yet, this fails to account for the fact that HIs do indeed take place. Krasner and other neorealist theorists respond to interventions in Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo by claiming that the states undertaking them do not really care about the humanitarian issues but instead focus on what is in the interests of their state; in other words, that the intentions of the actors are really not humanitarian. In an interesting way, Krasner turns the interests of the state into a single motive, the concern with protecting individual leaders’ positions and the positions of their states in the international order. The three levels of analysis assume that motives are central to evaluating international relations more generally and HI in particular. Even in the case of the systemic level where individual agency disappears, assumptions are made about what agents in the system will pursue, in this case security above all else. But an excessive focus on motives blinds us to different ways of evaluating HI. Nardin helps here by pointing out that there is an important distinction between motives and intentions, and that too much of the discourse surrounding HI focuses on motives, often conflating it with motives: The intention of an act is the state of affairs it seeks to bring about. A motive, in contrast, is the frame of mind in which the agent acts – the desires and other passions that propel him. Motives are a necessary element in judgments of responsibility, or praise and blame, culpability and excuse, but are often incidental to judgments of the justification, the objective rightness or wrongness, or an act (Nardin and Williams 2006, 10). Nardin uses this distinction to emphasize that, while motives should play a role in the moral evaluation of international affairs, intentions are just as, if not more, important in determining the moral justification of interventions, a determination that would play a role in whether or not an intervention should be called humanitarian. Although he tends to conflate the terms intention and motive, Nicholas Wheeler makes a similar point. Wheeler argues: ‘Making the primacy of motives the defining test of a legitimate humanitarian intervention excludes cases where states act for non-humanitarian reasons but produce a positive humanitarian outcome’ (2000, 195). In his book, Saving Strangers, Wheeler demonstrates that some of the most 140

Humanit ar ian Int er vent io n important humanitarian interventions were undertaken by states that had very mixed motives in their decision to act. As Michael Walzer has suggested when considering the value of unilateral versus multilateral interventions: Political motivations are always mixed, whether the actors are one or many. A pure moral will doesn’t exist in political life, and it shouldn’t be necessary to pretend that kind of purity. The leaders of states have a right, indeed, they have an obligation, to consider the interests of their own people, even when they are acting to help other people (ibid., 26). Clearly, an understanding of an agent’s motives is important to defining an intervention as humanitarian. But it should not be the sole criteria. Chris Brown has made a similar point in his analysis of the ‘inconsistency’ argument of those who critique HI. D rawing on the realist tradition of thought, Brown argues that the focus on motives is related to the ‘desire to find abstract, logical moral rules that will somehow enable the process of judgment to be circumvented’, a circumvention that ignores the central role of political judgment (2003, 47). To understand the ethics of HI, then, means focusing on intentions more than on motives. Intentions are nearer to the ‘reasons’ that Winch argued should be at the centre of truly understanding the social and political world. An intention can also be linked to an outcome, thus incorporating a consequentialist approach to the study of international ethics. In fact, by focusing on the concept of intentions in our moral evaluations of HI, we can better grasp the complex ways in which this practice not only reflects but actually shapes the international normative and political order. Those arguments that present an ‘ethical critique’ of intervention on the basis of purely critiquing the motives of interveners tend to miss this broader understanding.

Rules versus Judgments The last theoretical topic deserving some attention is the question of the criteria for whether or not HI should be undertaken. Whether or not such criteria can actually be developed has remained a point of much debate, a debate that becomes evident by reviewing various reports issued from the perspective of the UN over the last 20 years. These reports, beginning with critical responses to failures in Rwanda and Bosnia from within the UN system, reveal the difficulty in developing criteria for when and how to intervene in humanitarian emergencies. In 1994, the UN and the international community more generally failed to respond to what rapidly became genocide in Rwanda. In the course of only two months, over 800,000 people were viciously murdered in the context of an ongoing ethnic conflict between Tutsi and Hutus. What made this catastrophe even worse was that the leader of the UN peacekeepers already positioned in the country had warned of the dangers of an impending genocide (D allaire 2004; Barnett 2002). 141

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns The following year, in the context of an ongoing peacekeeping mission in Bosnia Herzegovina, D utch peacekeepers allowed a group of Serb forces to march past them, take the town of Srebrenica, and then massacre approximately 10,000 Muslim men and boys. Combined, these two tragedies led many to question the competence of the UN peacekeeping system as whole. When Kofi Annan, who had served as the head of the D epartment of Peacekeeping in the UN system during both these episodes, became Secretary-General of the UN in 1996, he authorized reports on both tragedies (United Nations 1999a; 1999b). These reports were highly critical of the UN system both in terms of decisions about whether or not to intervene (Rwanda) and how to intervene (Srebrenica). They recommended new institutional structures within the UN, including changes in the way information should be processed and changes in how the various departments relate to both the Office of the Secretary-General and the member states. At the same time as these reports were being issued, the UN was largely ignored when NATO undertook military force against Serbia in response to human rights violations in Kosovo. More accurately, the recognition that Russia and China would refuse to allow aggressive peace enforcement tactics against Serbia prompted France, the US and UK to turn to NATO forces. This military action, which the UN Secretary-General grudgingly admitted might have been necessary even without UN authorization, further confused the debate over when HI should be allowed and according to what criteria. These reports and the Kosovo campaign were then followed by a 2000 report that recommended substantial revisions to the D epartment of Peacekeeping Operations (D PKO) within the UN bureaucracy. Commonly known as the Brahimi Report, it reinforced the traditional UN idea of peacekeeping that relied on the consent of the parties in a conflict. This suggestion moved away from the more aggressive peace enforcement ideas found in Boutros-Ghali’s Agenda for Peace. At the same time, cognizant of failures in Rwanda and Srebrenica, it recommended that if individuals were in danger of being harmed, UN peacekeeping forces should be able to step in and use force. It also recommended that UN authorization was essential for any justified use of military force. As well, it argued for clearer mandates, more strategic information prior to an attack, and clearer lines of authority within the UN system. This report led to a major restructuring of the D PKO. It did not lay out any clearly defined criteria for what constitutes a justified military intervention, but it did frame its conclusions in terms of the need for better rules governing when intervention can and cannot take place. The emphasis on a clear mandate from the UN Security Council captured this need for clearer criteria. This move toward providing clear criteria for when an intervention can take place culminated the next year in an important statement on HI. In D ecember 2001, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), supported by the Canadian government, issued The Responsibility to Protect, a report that sought to shift the discourse of international humanitarian action and international security more broadly away from debates on the right to intervene toward a discourse surrounding the ‘responsibility’ of various actors to provide for human security. It arose, at least in part, from the frustration of many that while a 142

Humanit ar ian Int er vent io n serious humanitarian disaster was developing in Kosovo, the UN Security Council would not authorize military action, which led to NATO undertaking an air war to coerce the Yugoslav leadership to halt its actions against the Albanian/Muslim community. The document, however, was overshadowed by the US’s post-9/11 actions, although it has seen a return in international security debates, particularly those emanating from the UN. The report is an attempt to reinterpret the rules to conform to new international security challenges, particularly those concerning HI. It begins with the principle of non-intervention, and then construes its task as being the definition of those circumstances when that ‘rule’ can be overridden; in other words, the creation of a rule for breaking the rules (ICISS 2001, 31–2). Its section on authority emphasizes that the Security Council must remain the only source of legitimate authority in the international system. Challenging or evading the UN Security Council will ‘undermine the principle of a world order based on international law and universal norms’ (ibid., 48). In 2004, a UN report continued to insist that the current rules of the UN system simply needed to be better enforced rather than abandoned. This report resurrected collective security as a central principle of the international security order. The report’s subtitle, ‘Our Shared Responsibility’ suggests a possible move away from a rule-governed international security order. But, when considering the dangers of preventive military action, the report falls back upon the UN Charter, stating boldly: ‘We do not favour the rewriting or reinterpretation of Article 51 [states cannot use military force without Security Council authorization]’ (2004, 63). These UN reports can be seen as reactions to various failures to respond to humanitarian emergencies by means of reinvigorating or developing new rules to govern when HI should take place. An alternative to this move to more rules might be some notion of political judgement. Indeed, built into these calls for greater criteria is actually a place for political judgement. All the reports emphasize that the UN Security Council should be the final arbiter of when and where HIs should take place. The Council is a political body, not a court of law, so making political judgements is what it is designed to do. The Responsibility to Protect report also turns to the just war tradition as a framing device, a tradition of thought that relies upon the idea of making judgements rather than conforming to specific rules in deciding when and where to intervene. D ecisions as to how to respond to humanitarian emergencies might be helped by clearer criteria. At the same time, the diversity of human experience, the current political structure of the international system and the lack of a single agreed upon set of moral and political norms to govern our shared political life suggest that perhaps refined political judgement is more important than a purely rule-governed political order.   

There exists an NGO devoted to promoting the Responsibility to Protect agenda, which can be found at . See Rengger (2002) for more on the just war tradition as a way to make political judgements rather than as a way to enforce specific rules. For more on the complexities of rules in the international political system, see Lang, Rengger and Walker (2006). 143

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The Case of Sudan In order to make some of these theoretical points more concrete, this section will briefly explore one particular HI, the joint United Nations–African Union mission in Sudan. At the time of writing (August 2008), two distinct UN missions were operating in the Sudan: UNMIS and UNAMID . These two missions have different mandates, although they do seek to cooperate. The first, UNMIS, was authorized in March 2005 by Security Council Resolution 1590. Its mandate is to facilitate the implementation of a peace agreement between the government of Sudan (GOS) and the main rebel group in the South, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). The GOS and the SPLM/A had signed a peace agreement in January 2005, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which sought to resolve a series of conflicts throughout the country. Media accounts of the conflict portrayed it in a shifting set of binary terms, such as Arab versus African and South versus North. In fact, due to the range of different migratory and colonization patterns that Sudan has experienced throughout its history, none of these easy binary terms best captures the conflict (Iyob and Khadiagala 2006). The UNMIS mandate is a traditional peacekeeping one, designed primarily to facilitate the implementation of the CPA between the GOS and the SPLM/A. The Security Council authorized 10,000 troops and 715 police, numbers that are quite large in comparison to other missions. The list of tasks that the mission is to accomplish do not reflect an overly aggressive peacemaking or peace enforcement approach, reflecting perhaps the cautions of a post-Somalia and post-Bosnia D epartment of Peacekeeping; in other words, rather than seek to enforce a peace between warring sides or take sides, this mission was designed to help those who have already agreed to peace make it happen. There are some hints of a more aggressive approach, with clause 4(d) of the resolution calling for efforts to ‘protect and promote human rights in Sudan’. Also, there is reference in the resolution to the situation in D arfur, although there is no direct mandate to act in this context. In May 2008, the mission was extended for one more year, primarily to help in creating free and fair elections. The second mission in Sudan, UNAMID , was authorized to deal with the situation in D arfur, a region in the west of the country. The conflict cannot really be defined by a single set of opponents; as with the larger conflict in Sudan, overlapping ethnicities and religious affiliations make it difficult to identify a clear set of opponents (Flint and D e Waal 2005). As a result of the actions of various groups, however, the violence in the D arfur region has prompted international action of a more peacemaking sort than the larger conflict throughout Sudan. In the summer of 2004, the African Union authorized a small peacekeeping force designed to monitor the N’D jamena ceasefire, an agreement between the GOS and rebel groups in D arfur, particularly the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM),  D etails on the missions come from the UN website, specifically the UNMIS site at and the UNAMID site . 144

Humanit ar ian Int er vent io n which aligned itself with the SPLM/A. Attempts to increase the size and mandate of the force were resisted by the GOS, although the force, known as AMIS, did eventually reach almost 7,000 troops. Peace agreements were signed, but various groups and GOS-supported militias refused to abide by them. On 31 July 2007 the UN Security Council finally approved its own mission to D arfur with Resolution 1769. This created what has become known as a hybrid UN–AU mission, entitled UNAMID . Although authorized to have almost 20,000 troops, its strength at the time of writing was only about 10,000 due to both budgetary and political delays. Unlike UNMIS, its mandate includes the obligation to protect the civilian population against attacks from the militia forces. While its overall responsibility is to implement the D arfur peace agreement, its more robust capacity to protect civilians differentiates it from the UNMIS mission. Although it is officially mandated to do this, however, there has been little evidence that it has effectively been able to stop much of the main violence. At the same time, the term genocide has been used to describe the activities of various militias against the citizens of D arfur. In September 2004, US Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted before the UN Security Council that genocide was taking place in D arfur but, in violation of the spirit of the UN Genocide Convention, denied that the international community had the obligation to use military forces to stop it. Parallel with this, the newly created International Criminal Court (ICC) began to investigate various actors in the D arfur region and the GOS for possible indictments for the crime of genocide. In March 2005, the UN Security Council referred the situation in Sudan to the ICC for consideration by means of Resolution 1593. In July 2007, the ICC Prosecutor issued warrants for the arrest of top officials in the GOS for genocide in D arfur. In July 2008 the Prosecutor requested an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan, Omar Bashir. With this step, the attempt to deal with the situation in Sudan through a judicial process has increased in prominence. With these two missions and the activities of the ICC, the HI in Sudan reflects some of the dilemmas identified above. First, should the two missions be called HIs? Both were designed to implement peace agreements and bring about an end to a long-standing conflict. As a result, it would seem they should be. Yet, coupled with the moves by the ICC to prosecute those responsible for perpetuating the conflict and creating a genocide, these two interventions seem to be part of something different. Elsewhere, I have argued that some interventions change from being humanitarian to punitive (Lang 2008, 58–77). Punitive interventions, while they may have a humanitarian component, are designed to punish those who brought about the violation of human rights that the intervention is seeking to halt. UNMIS is less oriented to a punitive operation, but UNAMID has a stronger punitive element. While not cooperating with the ICC at this stage the mission of UNAMID includes a ‘rule of law’ component’, an element found in an increasing number of HIs. This rule of law element of the mission includes helping to create judicial capacity, build prisons and create a more effective penal and judicial infrastructure. 

See, for instance, the UNMID press release on these matters at . 145

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns The increasingly punitive dimension of these HIs does not mean that HI has radically changed its meaning. It does mean, however, that this new hybrid punitive humanitarian form of intervention is playing a role in constituting a different kind of international order. Rather than the peacekeeping of the Cold War or even the peacemaking of the early post-Cold War era, a punitive ethos is one of the defining features of the international order today. It is in part linked to a US political culture of punishment, but is also linked to the increasingly vocal activities of various NGOs pushing for justice in situations around the world. These calls for justice from human rights organizations often include calls for punishment; the welcome of the indictment of the Sudanese president demonstrates exactly this kind of ethos. There are certainly elements of traditional humanitarianism in UNMIS and UNAMID , but the point being made here is that their links to, and elements of, a more punitive ethos suggest how HI might need to be further defined in the future. Exploring the intentions of the two missions also raises some important questions. The intentions of the missions are best captured in the two mandates. In fact, almost all the reports issued by the UN have emphasized the importance of clearly defined mandates. The mandate of UNMIS, the first mission, is focused primarily on assisting the parties that signed a peace treaty; most of the operative clauses in UN Security Council Resolution 1590 use the word ‘assist’ to describe the tasks of the mission. The second mission, UNAMID , has a stronger peacemaking mandate; many of the operative clauses of UN Security Council Resolution 1769 deal with establishing a secure environment and contributing to the protection of human rights and good governance. As evidenced by the mandates of the two resolutions, these missions combined would seem to be clearly defined HIs, contributing to a peace agreement and the protection of human rights throughout the country. When dealing with the UN, however, intentions are not so easily captured by simply reading mandates. Because the UN is composed of states, it is sometimes difficult to identify it as a clearly defined agent that can be considered to even have intentions. The question of whether or not the UN can have intentions is further complicated by the different agencies involved in the creation and execution of peacekeeping missions. The Security Council defines the mandate, where the five permanent members have the most power and influence. Yet the mission is then operationalized by the D epartment of Peacekeeping. Finally, the soldiers that end up serving in the mission are seconded to the UN, but do not necessarily drop their commitments to their own states. These overlapping roles of different agents in the formulation of peacekeeping missions make finding intentions a difficult matter. Outside of the difficulties in finding what the exact intentions are of the UN in these missions, the problem of motives also remains. In the case of Sudan, for instance, one can examine the motives of the US, arguably the most powerful state 

Related to this, although not central to the points being made here, is that it is sometimes difficult to hold the UN responsible for any events in the international system, since its actions are really those of the states involved. For two accounts of the UN as a responsible agent, see Lang (2003b) and Adelman (2008). 146

Humanit ar ian Int er vent io n in the system at the current moment. On the one hand, some have argued that the Bush administration was spurred to act more aggressively in Sudan after the attacks of 11 September 2001, leading it to view countries like Sudan as potential terrorist hotspots where it would need to remain engaged for its own national interests (Iyob and Khadiagala 2006, 119–21). On the other hand, the US did declare that genocide was taking place, even though it claimed it had no legal responsibility to act. D espite these complications of motives and intentions, however, one can still argue that these interventions are humanitarian. The discourses surrounding both missions, ones imbued with humanitarian purposes, may not perfectly reflect the governments’ intentions, but they do certainly create a larger discursive structure of humanitarianism. Moreover, while the major powers on the Security Council may not have the purest motives, other states submitting troops on the ground may be involved for more truly humanitarian purposes. While certainly no saint, the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, when sending some of the first troops of the AU mission, stated: ‘Our forces will not stand by and watch innocent civilians being hacked to death like the case was here in 1994’ (Jok 2007, 264). Again, this is not to privilege the motives of the Rwandan president, only to suggest that a wide range of motives and intentions can be found in the construction of these missions. In terms of outcomes, while violence has not been halted, both missions have been instrumental in providing relief, protecting refugee camps and creating new political and economic infrastructures in Sudan. These efforts may not seem like a ‘success’ at this point, but they are key to the rebuilding of the society and will certainly have a long-term positive effect. Finally, the question of rules and judgement also appears in this conflict. Many have argued that the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine is tailor-made for exactly this kind of situation. There is a government failing in its responsibility to protect its citizens so the automatic rule for the international community is to intervene. Indeed, the R2P NGO has issued its own declaration stating exactly this. At the same time, others are pointing out that this move to an automatic rule like application of criteria may not be advancing the interests of the international community as a whole or the people in D arfur. Alex Bellamy, a strong proponent of the R2P idea, has argued that it should not be an automatic set of criteria for intervention. Bellamy suggests disassociating intervention from the R2P criteria, and instead using them as a means to develop more sustained and long-term reforms of the international political structure (2008). None of these critical comments is intended to demonstrate that the interventions in Sudan are not HIs or that they should not be undertaken. Rather, they demonstrate that there remain a series of tensions in how we understand the ethics of intervention. Moreover, these same sets of concerns could also be invoked in almost any other ethical analysis of international affairs. Unlike domestic political issues, ethical dilemmas seem even more pronounced at the global level, undoubtedly because of the diversity of ethical and religious traditions that shape the global system. Being 

See . 147

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns attentive to these dilemmas and understanding their sources is an important step in thinking more clearly about ethics and international affairs.10

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Humanit ar ian Int er vent io n Iyob, R., and Khadiagala, G. (2006), Sudan: The Elusive Quest for Peace (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner). International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) (2001), The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa: International D evelopment Research Centre). Jahn, B. (2006), ‘Classical Smoke, Classical Mirror: Kant and Mill in Liberal International Relations Theory’, in Jahn, B. (ed.), Classical Theory in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Jok, J.M. (2007), Sudan: Race, Religion, and Violence (Oxford: One World Books). Krasner, S. (1999), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Lang, Jr., A. (2002), Agency and Ethics: The Politics of Military Intervention (Albany, NY: State University Press of New York). — (ed.) (2003a), Just Intervention (Washington, D C: Georgetown University Press). — (2003b), ‘Responsibility and Agency: The UN and the Fall of Srebrenicia’, in Erskine, T. (ed.), Can Institutions Have Responsibilities? (Basingstoke: Palgrave). — (2008), Punishment, Justice and International Relations: Ethics and Order after the Cold War (London: Routledge). —, Rengger, N. and Walker, W. (2006), ‘The Role(s) of Rules: Some Conceptual Clarifications’, International Relations 20:3, 274–94. Mill, J. (1859), ‘A Few Words on Non-Intervention’, Fraser’s Magazine. Reprinted in Foreign Policy Perspectives, No. 8 (London: Libertarian Alliance). Available at: . Nardin, T., and Williams, M. (eds) (2006), Humanitarian Intervention (New York: New York University Press). Orford, A. (2003), Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rengger, N. (2002), ‘On the Just War Tradition in the Twenty-First Century’, International Affairs 78: 2, 353–63. Rosenau, J. (1969), ‘The Concept of Intervention’, Journal of International Affairs 22:2, 165–76. Tesón, F. (1988), Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry into Law and Morality (New York: Transnational Publishers). United Nations (1999a) ‘Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda’, United Nations Security Council Report S/1999/1257. Available at: , accessed 10 July 2008. — (1999b) ‘Report of the Secretary General Pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35. 1999’, United Nations General Assembly Report A/54/549. Available at: , accessed 10 July 2008. — (2000), Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations (New York: United Nations). Available at: . — (2004) ‘A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility’. Report of the Secretary General’s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (New York: United Nations). Available at: . 149

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Vincent, R. (1974), Non-Intervention and International Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Vitoria, F. (1991), Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Waltz, K. (1959) Man, the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press). Wheeler, N. (2000), Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Winch, P. (1958), The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (New Jersey: Humanities Press International).

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9 From State Security to Human Security? Matthew S. Weinert

Scholars and practitioners spawn neologisms to capture presumably new phenomena, offer new insights into a recurring problem, or signify a structural dynamic or process neglected or misunderstood. Sometimes a term loses its utility over time and falls into disrepute. Other times, vocabulary like ‘globalisation’ or ‘peacekeeping’ find residence within the international relations lexicon in ways that renovate policy and theoretical analyses. Human security’s place in the lexicon remains partially ambiguous. D etermining, moreover, whether it should be eulogised or anointed strikes me as premature and somewhat inappropriate. Much work, theoretical and practical, needs to be done. Hard questions need to be asked. Broad principles that have been adopted into policy statements – think of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (ICISS 2001; High Level Panel 2004; Hoge 2008) – need to be refined and implemented. Entertaining such issues, even if at the moment there are no evident answers, is a positive development for it signifies conceptual plausibility and policy potential. But the devil is always in the details, and working out those details involves more than a bit of ethical thinking. ‘To think ethically’, Terry Nardin advises, ‘is to move back and forth between the general and the particular – to draw upon general principles in reaching particular judgments and decisions and, at the same time, to revise those principles in the light of the particular circumstance in which they are used’ (1993, 3). On this view, policy formulation is an ongoing interpretive movement; the meaning of human security will thus emerge from the articulation of its twin architectural pillars – ‘freedom from fear’ and ‘freedom from want’ – in particular contexts. For instance, ‘freedom from want’, set against persistent and systemic socioeconomic deprivations, translated into the Millennium D evelopment Goals. Similarly, ‘freedom from fear’, set against the centrality of the diamond trade that fueled conflicts in Angola, Liberia and Sierra Leone, translated into the Kimberley Process diamond certification scheme which implements substantial export and import controls on diamond producers and traders to interdict the sale of diamonds mined in regions mired in conflict on the world market. Put differently, human security’s ultimate intelligibility and

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns practicality, and the roles and responsibilities of multiple actors that precipitate from it, are contextual, not predetermined. But this is precisely the problem for many in both the academic and policy worlds. Human security, though normatively attractive, remains analytically weak (see for example Buzan 2004; Newman 2004). D efined in the United Nations D evelopment Programme’s Human Development Report (HDR) as ‘safety from such chronic threats as hunger, disease and repression … and … protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life’ (UND P 1994, 23), human security conceivably incorporates virtually ‘anything that presents a critical threat to life and livelihood … whatever the source’ (Newman 2004, 358). Its very inclusiveness undermines its utility. Yet, as Barry Buzan (2004, 370) suggests by his distinction between ‘international’ and ‘social’ security, security may best be treated as a bifurcated, not multivalent concept. However, human security advocates the retort that interstate violence and territorial incursions are but one manifestation of insecurity – and they may not be the most salient for particular communities. Insecurities emanate from multiple sources, and thus the compilers of the HDR maintained our conception of security must be broadened from an ‘exclusive stress on territorial security to a much greater stress on people’s security’ (UND P 1994, 24). To assist the policy community with such a paradigmatic transition, the HDR identified seven broad categories: economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community and political security (ibid., 24f). This latter, broader view prevailed in the guise of ‘impressive’ policies (Paris 2004, 370), including the 1997 Ottawa Convention banning antipersonnel landmines; creation of the International Criminal Court in 1998; the 2000 Millennium D evelopment Goals (MD Gs) to combat absolute poverty, hunger and the lack of primary educational opportunities (among other objectives); the 2002 Kimberley Process diamond certification scheme; and the 2005 agreement on principle of an international ‘responsibility to protect’ populations from egregious harm and suffering when the state was unwilling or unable to do so. To coordinate human security-related policies and projects, 14 states established the Human Security Network among their foreign ministries. Regional organisations such as the European Union, African Union, Organization of American States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have articulated human security platforms and polices. The UN Trust Fund for Human Security (UNTFHS), established through the initiative and generous contributions of the Japanese government, has financed or is currently financing over 170 projects in approximately 70 countries. D espite its critics, human security has become a vibrant affair in the policy world. Among academics, human security is contested. True, a considerable supportive literature has emerged. But a chorus of detractors castigates the strong welfare orientation (Carafano and Smith 2006), breadth (Buzan 2004; MacFarlane and Khong 2006; and Paris 2001 and 2004), or seeming endorsement of interventionist  

See . ‘Project Profiles’, , accessed 26 February 2008. 152

Fr o m St at e Sec ur it y t o Human Sec ur it y? proclivities that now stimulate ‘buyer’s remorse’ (Hoge 2008). To worsen matters, much of the literature proceeds without or with little reference to international relations theory, which further segregates the concept in academic discussion. D espite polarising disagreements about human security’s definitions (that is, narrow versus broad formulations, freedom from fear versus freedom from want) and its presumed ‘fuzziness’, D on Hubert (2004) maintains that there is in fact considerable agreement. Human security focuses on people or, as some maintain, individuals. This is human security’s cosmopolitanism. Further, human security appreciates that people face new vulnerabilities as a result of globalisation and the changing nature of armed conflict. Thus, ‘ensuring safety from violence is an integral part of the agenda’, but so too are responses to economic, social, and identity dislocations attributable to globalisation. Consequently, human security ‘requires a rethinking of state sovereignty’ (Hubert 2004, 351). If what Hubert writes is true, then human security’s cosmopolitanism not only imposes significant responsibilities on multiple actors, but, by doing so, radically alters the ethical, intellectual and practical frontiers of the state and its sovereignty. These are significant issues with substantial practical and theoretical ramifications. But I part company with Hubert. D espite how often we may rhetorically assert we have obligations to others, these obligations cannot be unlimited. Here, I underscore human security’s inherent limits that prevent the obligations of either the state or international community from becoming too encompassing and hence impossible to fulfill. Indeed, human security seeks to empower the state and its citizens: this internal, pragmatic logic mitigates its presumed revisionism and cosmopolitanism. Far from eroding the state and its sovereignty, human security ultimately strengthens both.

The Human Security Concept: a Pragmatic Cosmopolitanism for a State-Centric World Concepts permit people to classify, relate and differentiate; they enable us ‘to make judgments about the relevance and significance of information to analyze specific situations, and to create new ideas’ (D ingwerth and Pattberg 2006, 186). As intellectual constructs, concepts by themselves lack independent power to alter or structure the world. These effects emanate from a concept’s persuasiveness to political actors, which derive in part from its ability to balance analytic precision with practicality, capture anew a distinctive phenomenon or relationships between phenomena, or compel specific actors to perform specific functions.



In my interpretation, human security translates globalising forces into manageable chunks by reterritorialising and reading them as insecurities or actual security threats in ways that impinge on human capability and livelihood, and thus in turn state capacity. 153

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Concepts, then, tell us as much about ourselves as they do about the world. Human security embodied both the optimism and the anxieties associated with the end of the Cold War. But if it initially capitalised on anticipations of a peace dividend, egregious intrastate conflicts and wide-scale deprivations informed its development. D r. Mahbub al-Huq and his UND P team came to understand persistent deprivations (that is, identity repression, absolute poverty, hunger, disease and resource misallocation or scarcity) as destabilising forces that impinged on the viability of populations and strained state capacity and legitimacy. Such conditions, they believed, altered perceptions: groups facing persistent deprivations may exacerbate and demonise pre-existing identity divisions. Ensuing, engulfing violence might eventually translate into substantial intranational and international security breaches – think of Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Georgia, Sierra Leone, Burundi and Rwanda, among others (Ogata 2002, 2; Bush 2002 maintains a linkage between poverty and terrorism). The question, then, is how to manage such conflicts. The human security concept approaches that question by analytically disassembling the state into its smallest components (people) in order to ‘put it back together again’. How this ought to be done is debatable. Erecting global governance initiatives (the ICC, the Ottawa and Kimberly processes, and the MD Gs) is one response. Another focuses on fortifying state–society relations and empowering not only the state but communities within it. Given multiple interpretations and confusions surrounding human security, the Japanese government, which had actively backed the agenda, established the Commission on Human Security (CHS) in 2001 to (1) ‘promote public understanding, engagement and support of human security and its underlying imperatives’; (2) ‘develop the concept … as an operational tool for policy formulation and implementation’; and (3) ‘propose a concrete program of action to address critical and pervasive threats to human security’. CHS’s final report, Human Security Now (2003a), translated Franklin Roosevelt’s visions of ‘freedom from fear’ and ‘freedom from want’ (1941) into a protective empowerment framework to clarify the relationship between human and state security, delineate human security’s policy utility by giving it some analytic precision, and identify types of programs to combat insecurities. Human security, the Commission maintained, … means protecting people from critical and pervasive threats and situations, [and] building on their strengths and aspirations. It also means creating systems that give people the building blocks of survival, dignity and livelihood. Human security connects different types of freedoms – freedom from want, freedom from fear and freedom to take action on one’s own behalf. To do this, it offers two general strategies: protection and empowerment (CHS 2003b, 1). Protection targets ‘insecurities resulting from conflict and violence’ (ibid.). Initiatives might include ‘strengthening civilian police and demobilizing combatants; 

CHS, ‘Establishment of the Commission’, , accessed 28 March 2007. 154

Fr o m St at e Sec ur it y t o Human Sec ur it y? meeting immediate needs of displaced people; launching reconstruction and development programs; promoting reconciliation and coexistence; and advancing effective governance’ (ibid., 2). If protection approaches security through state and institution-driven and -oriented initiatives, then empowerment aims to construct security from the ground up by helping and enabling people ‘to develop their potential and become full participants in decision-making’ (ibid., 1). Empowerment initiatives might include ensuring access to health care and education, promoting broad-based economic growth, microfinancing, and carefully crafting ‘affirmative action programmes … so that all sections of society gain’ (UND P 1994, 39). By encouraging investment in human resources, human security complements, not displaces, state security. Theoretically, the logic is not new (see MacFarlane and Khong 2006, Part I). Programmatically, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) anticipated human security in its 1976 D eclaration of Concord, which maintained that national and regional stability and ‘resilience’ precipitate from social and economic development. By ‘improving the living conditions of local populations’, ASEAN leaders ‘expected to check subversive influences’ and stabilise their societies (Emmers 2004, 11; ASEAN 1976; MacFarlane and Khong 2006, 128). The emphasis on checking subversive influences probably strikes some as morally objectionable, especially given Indonesia’s suppression of East Timor and Aceh. These actions do not, obviously, cohere with human security. But I raise this antecedent precisely because of their common logic: both link the individual with the community, and translate the stability, resilience and security of each in terms of the other. Put differently, though people are human security’s immediate referents and beneficiaries, the state is its ultimate referent and beneficiary. This latter aspect is unfortunately often overlooked; human security’s critics often read it in the absence of state. Surely, human security can be treated as an end in and of itself. But one might alternatively think of human security as a means – that is, an ‘ongoing process of minimizing obstacles and threats to the protection and promotion of human life and its potential for becoming more fully human’ (Kim 1984, 186) – to the end of state viability. This logic defends the sovereign state ‘on the grounds that the state is of authentic value to its population’ (Wheeler and Morris 1996, 151); states, after all, ‘can be powerful custodians of human welfare, and thus worthy of contingent loyalty’ (Harbour 1999, 80). Whether and how well states perform these roles is an empirical matter on which we may reasonably evaluate the state. I call this logic pragmatic cosmopolitanism. Attachment of the adjective ‘pragmatic’ signifies necessary limitations on the noun ‘cosmopolitanism’. The move is not merely grammatical; it highlights aspects of human security that can be reasonably articulated in effective policies, and thus, I hope, stimulates more productive conversation between advocates and skeptics. Cosmopolitanism situates the individual at the center of the moral and political universe (see Harbour 1999, 79ff; Kuper 2004, 4), which invites debates about the extensiveness of obligations to strangers, the value and relevance of political boundaries (and therefore sovereignty and the state), and the nature of the institutional framework necessary to implement a robust cosmopolitanism. These 155

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns are fair questions, to be sure, but for some the term ‘cosmopolitanism’ engenders resistance: ‘freedom from fear’ conjures images of an interventionist global police force; ‘freedom from want’ invites analogies to welfare programs dictated by ‘supranational’ fiat. Obligations and policies are thus conceivably infinitely intrusive in the affairs of state and individual (see Carafano and Smith 2006). How, then, would a proponent of human security respond to such concerns? Advocates recognise that they ‘cannot examine [or respond to] human security issues relating to all people or all communities’ (Ogata 2002, 4). Not only are potential threats potentially unlimited, resources are limited. Sadako Ogata’s statement, then, is as much a pragmatic reading of human security as it is a thinly veiled call to action for states to assume primary responsibility for protecting and empowering their denizens. But the statement, when read in the contexts of her 2002 Brown University speech and more generally her work on CHS, also suggests the need for interagency, multisector collaboration to help states manage myriad insecurities. For these reasons Ogata averred it was incumbent on the Commission to ‘provide a conceptual link that covers the domains of poverty and conflict’ (ibid., 5), which it found in the threshold criteria of ‘critical and pervasive threats’. This, of course, raises the question of what constitutes a threat, let alone a critical and pervasive one. After all, the Human Development Report identified seven dimensions of security, to which CHS appended additional, related categories of concern, including the security needs of people in violent conflict, on the move and in post-conflict situations; also arms proliferation, education and citizenship (CHS 2003b, 3). Given such breadth, any human malady or discomfort might be construed as a human security issue rendering it analytically weak (for example, Buzan 2004; Carafano and Smith 2006; and Paris 2001). Sympathetic critics have suggested limiting human security to its protective dimension to ensure policy relevance. The term ‘security’, after all, should be reserved for ‘the highest priority issues’ (Owen 2004, 379). Intuitively, threats to individual ‘physical integrity that are planned and perpetrated by states, individuals, or groups that aim to “do them in”’ fit more comfortably ‘with what most consider to be “security threats”’ since it ‘focuses on organized violence’ (MacFarlane and Khong 2006, 228). But this position privileges specific kinds of threats – say, interstate violence, ethnic cleansing and genocide – without (or with little) regard that many states face distinct non-traditional threats or insecurities. Food scarcity consequent to increasing desertification and ecological degradation spawns clashes in many subSaharan African countries (CHS 2003a, 16). Sierra Leone counts ‘petty theft’ as a result of persistent, systemic poverty and unemployment as the greatest threat to its fragile peace (Smillie 2006, 27). A volume commissioned by the US Institute of Peace and entitled Constructing Justice and Security after War (Call 2007), which focused on security and judicial sector reform in post-conflict societies (and thus not on human security), found that ‘individual security or rather insecurity … seems to play an unexpectedly prominent role in the most successful cases of peace consolidation’ (ibid., 15). D espite international community and state efforts, in the end common crime (robberies and homicides) and youth gang violence plagued 156

Fr o m St at e Sec ur it y t o Human Sec ur it y? and nearly derailed post-conflict peace and reconciliation efforts in El Salvador, Guatemala, East Timor and South Africa (ibid., 378ff). The UN Security Council, using data supplied by the World Bank, estimates that ‘countries coming out of war face a 44 per cent chance of relapsing into fighting within the first five years of peace’ (UNSC 2007). While the Council attributed the recurrence of violence to inadequate numbers of well-trained peacekeepers, it also maintained that ‘human rights abuses and social exclusion’ play a paramount role. Failure to address social exclusion and its concomitant deprivations only encourages ‘[t]hose who feel marginalised, deprived or angered by what they perceive as injustices caused by poverty and inequity [to] find new ways of grouping themselves together’ (Ogata 2002, 2). But violence is always symptomatic of deeper maladies which human security aims to tackle. Roles and responsibilities are thus necessarily determined by context, agent capacities and coordination between relevant agents. So even if we accept the fact that states encounter different security threats from unconventional sources, we run into a different sort of problem. Paradoxically, while human security aims to disrupt processes that threaten to erupt into violence, its very breadth does, as critics maintain, undermine this objective since the concept fails to prioritise specific threats in ways that may help policy-planning. In other words, human security’s chief strength – its contextual sensitivity – potentially belies its chief promise – its proactive, preventive possibilities. How, then do we prioritise among diverse threats? Official UN formulations provide the necessary pragmatic hook: human security refers to ‘the protection of the vital core of all human lives from critical and pervasive threats’ which, according to Taylor Owen, ‘establishes severity, immediacy, and scope’ as the threshold criteria for action (2004, 383). These criteria provide a benchmark against which to measure the multiple dimensions of security enumerated by the HDR and the CHS, thus helping us to prioritise threats. Rather than stymieing security analysis, these multiple dimensions should be treated as ‘disciplinary subsets of what is a clearly interdisciplinary concept’ (ibid., 381). These divisions, moreover, ‘allow issues to be studied on their own and … for their interconnections to be analyzed’ (ibid., 381ff). This ‘severity-based’ approach reveals limits in the arguments advanced by those who seek to restrict human security to its protective dimension. Let us return for a moment to MacFarlane and Khong, who delimit human security to threats to individual ‘physical integrity that are planned and perpetrated by states, individuals, or groups that aim to “do them in”’ (2006, 228). The view permits a fairly extensive activist international agenda: combating and prosecuting those who commit egregious crimes; banning landmines and conflict diamonds; monitoring small arms trafficking. But what of famine, which Amartya Sen has proven to be the result of planning and deliberateness and not because of a lack of food, or persistently severe economic deprivation – issues that for MacFarlane and Khong fall in the developmental dimension? If we apply their criteria of organised violence, then famine must count as a substantive threat to human security. But what of my second example, which they disqualify (if only because it falls in the so-called ‘developmental’ dimension of 157

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns human security)? Conflicts in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, East Timor, the Congo, Sudan, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Liberia, among others, have deep roots in economic deprivations. I certainly understand and appreciate their concerns, especially considering the potentially infinite constellation of maladies, as well as limitations of resources to combat such ills. But their restrictive view robs human security of its ingenuity: that both our conceptions of ‘threat’ and ‘security’ need to be revised given the realities of conflict in the world. ‘By focusing on the people who are the very victims of today’s security threats … you can come closer to identifying their protection needs’ (Ogata 2002, 3). By examining ‘people with their diverging interests and relations with each other, you can uncover the political, economic and social factors that promote or hinder their security’ (ibid.). Human security might, then, prove a dynamic, transformative concept to illuminate the dark corridors of contemporary conflict and resuscitate fledgling and dying states. D ifferent therapies will be needed, to be sure. Metaphorically, we need the palliative – the bandage on the festering wound – just as much as we need longerterm systematic treatment and care – the antibiotic to combat infection. The bandage will not do much without attendant recognition of deeper, associated maladies. Interpretation and application of the human security framework are intelligible only with reference to contingencies (see Glasius and Kaldor 2006; MacLean et al. 2006; and McRae and Hubert 2001). This intelligibility, moreover, demands (as a matter of responsibility) increased interagent, multisector coordination to ascertain the nature and severity of insecurities, and devise appropriate responses to them. But the problem with advancing human security is not, as Ogata has maintained, the lack of warning or early action mechanisms that exacerbate security threats, but rather ‘the inertia to act’ (Ogata 2002, 4). After all, ‘who wishes to change … political, economic or social orders unless the threat is so imminent that you have to totally reorient your standing’? D ifferent situations will no doubt require qualitatively different responses. Owing to inertia some situations, having been persistently ignored, may require more intrusive measures than others. Here it is important to keep in mind two points. First, obligations to others are not unlimited. However objectionable, states will (and do) self-select the crises to which they respond based on a mixture of moral and practical concerns. Second, by investing in human resources to protect and empower peoples, human security affirms the idea or concept of the state, by which I mean the viability of a particular, territorial-institutional political configuration predicated on integrating diverse peoples into a single body politic and upholding the rule of law for all. As such, human security both defends the sovereign state ‘on the grounds that the state is of authentic value to its population’ (Wheeler and Morris 1996, 151), and locates the state in a larger moral project. If one accepts this premise, then one may justifiably conclude that when the state persistently and egregiously fails to defend the lives of its citizens, ‘its right to the protection of the norm of nonintervention should be called into question’ (ibid.). The International Commission of Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) grappled with this issue. It proposed shifting the terms of debate from ‘the right to intervene’ to a ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) communities from egregious, 158

Fr o m St at e Sec ur it y t o Human Sec ur it y? systematic violence and abuse. ICISS concluded that responsibility inheres in ‘sovereign states … to protect their own citizens from avoidable catastrophe – from mass murder and rape, from starvation – but that when they are unwilling or unable to do so, that responsibility must be borne by the broader community of states’ (2001, viii). Such responsibility, moreover, lies in ‘obligations inherent in the conception of sovereignty’; ‘the responsibility of the Security Council, under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, for the maintenance of international peace and security’; ‘specific legal obligations under human rights and human protection declarations, covenants and treaties, international humanitarian law and national law’; and ‘the developing practice of states, regional organizations and the Security Council itself’ (ibid., xi). A high-level panel appointed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan followed up on the implications of R2P by putting forward a new vision of collective security in its report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility (High-Level Panel 2004). In its endorsement of R2P as an emerging norm, which could only be activated in cases of genocide or other large-scale killing, ethnic cleansing or ‘serious violations of international humanitarian law’ which in turn disable the protective shield of Article 2(7), the panel outlined five ‘criteria of legitimacy’ to guide the Security Council in its considerations of whether to authorise military force (ibid., 66f). Use of force is a last resort; the panel outlined a continuum along which responsibility could be exercised, starting from preventive measures and mediation, and extending through to ‘rebuilding shattered societies’ (ibid., 66). Again, the panel reiterated the centrality of ‘capable and responsible States’ (ibid., vii) which understand the ‘indivisibility of security, economic development, and human freedom’ (ibid., 1) in this new security consensus. In other words, the state is the primary obligationholder towards those within its borders; the international community possesses only a residual obligation when the state fails. Yet if acceptance of R2P signals a commitment to ethical progress in international relations – over 160 state leaders agreed in principle to R2P at the September 2005 UN World Summit – then opposition to it (Hoge 2008) reflects a more embedded commitment to a more impermeable conception of sovereignty. While the skeptic will be quick to point out R2P’s failure with respect to D arfur, the optimist might ascertain that such acceptance signals not a weakening of the resolve to defend sovereignty, but an emboldening of the resolve to hold sovereignty and the state accountable to certain minimal standards. Even the most laissez-faire of systems must admit of restrictions to ensure system order and longevity. Compare D arfur, then, with the 2000 UK intervention in Sierra Leone in which the will to act produced stunning results. In response to the kidnapping of UN peacekeepers, and UNAMSIL in disarray: Britain sent in a small military force. British troops were on the ground within 100 hours of the event, and although there were never more than 400 of them, they stopped the rebel advance on Freetown dead in its tracks, with an emphasis on the word dead. They did something that the rebels had not encountered before: they fired back. And their aim was good. Not to put too 159

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns fine a point on it, this was truly a genuine innovation in this terrible war … The RUF … was not much of a fighting force. It never had been, and it could probably have been stopped years before if anybody had taken the responsibility (Smillie 2006, 22ff). One might infer that the use of force, despite its price, may have substantial benefits. But there is something deeper at work: the celebration of this ‘innovation’, as Smillie calls it, is not because of additional deaths, but because of its concretisation of a will to end violence. More importantly, few would call the UK’s intervention as corrosive of state sovereignty – indeed, the intervention acted to stabilise a failed state, halt the consuming civil war, and permit Sierra Leone to move forward, though not without problems. My point is that we ought to reconsider how we think about intervention and its presumed effects on sovereignty. Etymologically speaking, intervention means a coming-in-between, a caustic to corrode or alter a presumed inexorable course of events, and thus a preventive. D evelopment aid, then, is as much an intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state as are foreign military operations, though development aid may be framed by recipient states as recompense for past exploitation and thus is welcomed. Both act in arenas associated with sovereignty: the former counters a state’s failure or incapacity to empower (that is, assisting with and creating opportunities for economic and social development), while the latter might be employed to counter a state’s failure to protect. Because of the newsworthy nature of cross-border military interventions, we concentrate on them; moreover, we construe them as more offensive to sovereignty. Yet responsibility to others – interventions as it were – operate on multiple levels as the panel maintained. It might appear as shaming by a public official to get a country like China to do something it has not done – meddle in the internal affairs of its trading partners and allies (Polgreen 2008). It might appear as a seed fertility bank, education assistance or community-level organisation. Yet these ‘mini’ interventions might conceivably be more intrusive in affairs of state than, say, an R2P military force. Why? Because they aim to alter ossified behaviors and modes of thinking that can, over time, significantly affect power and authority structures of any given state. Imagine, for a moment, community organisation in an autocratic state: educated, involved peoples begin to shape their own destinies and over time make demands on their leaders. These interventions might engender practices of good, democratic governance which, as the UND P argued with respect to the MD Gs, ‘provides [a requisite] “enabling environment”’ for protection and empowerment by erecting ‘a political dynamic to respond to the social and economic priorities of people’; contributing ‘to political stability and thus to human security because open space for political contests allows for more peaceful resolution and management of conflict’; and, by giving voice to people and holding rulers accountable, making ‘politicians more likely to respond to the needs of ordinary people’. 

UND P, ‘Governance and the Millennium D evelopment Goals’, , accessed 29 March 2007. 160

Fr o m St at e Sec ur it y t o Human Sec ur it y? Implementation of democratic governance with assistance from international actors requires significant changes in the way states manage their internal affairs. D espite this level of intrusiveness, human security initiatives have been, if UNTFHS projects indicate acceptability, welcomed by developing states. Why? Perhaps because they provide immediate, tangible results – that is, they directly impact people’s daily lives – in ways that compensate for government deficiencies (corruption, mismanagement, inexperience) and state incapacity, human security initiatives may be perceived by recipient states as less threatening and less intrusive, and thereby less corrosive of state sovereignty.

Conclusion There is something markedly different about the crisis upon which the human security concept has emerged. It arises not on the burning logs of a specific calamity, but upon the remnant embers of cumulative crises. And though this observation may make human security ethically compelling (for in it lies a preventive hope of abating if not circumventing violence), it seems, conversely, to make human security less immediately appealing for states (and analysts) enmeshed in shortterm contingencies towards which they thrust valuable resources. Such presentist tendencies may redirect resources and attention away from longer-term maladies, with the result that states often fail to act resolutely in ongoing conflicts or vis-à-vis persistent deprivations. Judith Shklar (1990, 2) thus advised that ‘the difference between misfortune and injustice frequently involves our willingness and our capacity to act or not to act on behalf of victims, to blame or to absolve, to help, mitigate, and compensate, or to just turn away’. Former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, an enthusiastic support of human security, articulated the problem in starker terms. In an age of limited resources, multiple pressing conflicts and difficult choices, what is the point of delivering food to starving populations if ‘rebel gangs are just going to hijack it to fortify their own ranks’ (Axworthy 2001, 4)? What, moreover, ‘is the utility of an infrastructure program when neighbors are killing neighbors because they are of different ethnic identities’? If ethics is pre-eminently about choice, and human security is an ethical policy, then the policy-maker and analyst must order preferences as if one malady 

A cursory glance at the list of human security projects on the OCHA/UNTFHS website might lend credence to this view. Sample projects include reintegrating returning ID P/refugee women in community development projects in Afghanistan; delivering energy services to rural communities in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea and Senegal; training rural Cambodian farmers to improve water control and crop diversification; establishing revolving credit programs for women in El Salvador and Guatemala; and expanding access to quality education in Kosovo. See ‘Projects funded under the United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security’, , accessed 5 March 2008. 161

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns is qualitatively worse than another – no matter how objectionable this may be. And that is precisely what must be expected of the human security agenda, and what must be demanded if the concept is to have practical utility. The severity-based threat assessment offered by CHS might very well be the tool that adequately advances the human security concept. Attention to severity, however, brings us perilously close to crisis, something human security aims to avoid. In this regard, focusing primarily on threshold criteria to the neglect of other human insecurities that may be less immediately threatening, though more toxic over the long term, might work against human security’s objectives. To (possibly) avoid this scenario, it is essential that human security proceed along interagency, multisector lines. All relevant actors from all levels (local, regional, national, international, global) must coordinate activities and share, as much as possible, data and other pertinent information in ways that will enhance the planning and response processes. Planning and response, in turn, only work well if agents know what the problem is, have a clear causal account of how it arises, can identify controllable factors which if changed would interrupt causalities that produce bad outcomes, and have means for modifying those factors. An interagent, multisector approach encourages both policy specificity – a focus on particular threats – and breadth – recognition of the interconnectedness of insecurities and their cumulative effect on both people’s lives and context. People, the HDR’s writers maintained (UND P 1994, 23), must be able to ‘exercise … choices safely and freely … and … be relatively confident that the opportunities that they have today are not totally lost tomorrow’. The international community must look beyond human development, construed as ‘a process of widening the range of people’s choices’, and towards the broader contexts within which development is situated (ibid.). Neglect of social, economic, environmental, epidemiological and political contexts could very well translate into the rapid erosion of all investment, micro and macro. But this emphasis on context causes some to read human security with relativist lenses. Paris (2004, 371) rebukes CHS’s conclusion ‘that the content of human security really is in the eye of (the culture) of the beholder’. Buzan (2004) thinks human security’s idealism disconnects it from reality. The former overstates the matter by venturing down a relativist slippery slope, while the latter dismisses imperatives and dislocations of globalisation that affect peoples’ daily lives. Both favor conventional approaches to security, which may be appropriate for some (wealthy, developed) states, but they may overlook critical imperatives in others. Given that we live in an interconnected, global age, we are pressed to answer the question ‘how are we to live?’ (Booth et al. 2001). The straightjacket of the Cold War hindered our responses, despite attempts to regularise non-traditional discourses of security such as ASEAN’s national resilience doctrine. But new questions and problems emerge, or are given greater attention, during this ‘global age’, such as water and food scarcities, rising sea levels, terrorism and disease. And our responses must be more inventive and enterprising. Perhaps this globality – proximity to information and the spectacle of suffering, time and space compression – force us to revisit the most basic of questions related to our social selves and how we live 162

Fr o m St at e Sec ur it y t o Human Sec ur it y? with each other or how we should regard those not like us. These sentiments may not have underlined the human security concept at its formation, but they are the ones that animate it upon deeper reflection. It is with regard to deeper reflection that I wish to conclude this chapter. I mentioned the idea or concept of the state as a generality to describe the viability of one (dominant) type of political ordering. The state as an idea or concept is not threatened by the proliferation of fledgling states (Kosovo or East Timor, potentially a Basque region or a Quebec), however much a particular territorial configuration or instantiation of the state may be threatened. Nor is the idea of the state threatened by secure, stable, productive, healthy citizens. Rather, the threat to the idea of state increasingly emanates from corrosive forces within the state – from restiveness associated with a history of human insecurities. Collapse of state infrastructure; persistent governmental inability or unwillingness to empower and protect; the fragmentation of populations and the propagation of violence predicated on identity difference, (dis)loyalty to particular factions, and mal-distribution of and access to resources – that is, the proliferation of situations like Somalia, Congo and Liberia: these are the threats to the idea of state. Is human security qualitatively worse or corrosive than allowing such phenomena to fester? And yet human security may contain the seeds of the demise of the idea of state. Imagine a world in the very distant future in which humans are secure, capable and empowered: such peoples might amalgamate into different collectivities which could imperil specific instantiations of states through attrition. One might foretell a ‘Europe’ that in time supersedes all 27 EU member states, much as a France came to absorb Brittany, Gascony and D auphiné, among others. Alternatively, we might envision a disaggregation of the state into smaller polities that mimics pre-1500s Europe. Yet disaggregation might stem from another longer-term trend that is corrosive of the idea of the state. Communities (think Kosovo and East Timor) whose resolve to emancipate from the shackles of oppression and enforced deprivations may be unequivocal but whose viability is quite dubious, might become permanent wards of the international community. In those instances, preservation of the particular state is guaranteed by the sanctification of an increasingly empty idea of statehood, one whose conceptual parameters may be uniformly applied but whose substantive, functional content is woefully uneven. These are Robert Jackson’s ‘quasi-states’ (1993); practically, statehood exists only as a legalistic rendering of an outmoded, increasingly untenable concept of state. These two scenarios – one precipitant from human security, the other from human insecurity and an international noblesse oblige – might very well come to define the interstitial period between the Westphalian state system and the postnational, post-statist system beyond. 

Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the University of D elaware’s Colloquium on Global Governance, March 2008, and at the 66th Annual Midwestern Political Science Association Conference in Chicago, Illinois, April 2008. I wish to thank D an Green, Patrick Hayden, Mehrnaz Mostafavi and M.J. Peterson for helpful comments. 163

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References Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (1976), Declaration of ASEAN Concord, , accessed 1 March 2008. Axworthy, L. (2001), ‘Introduction’, in McRae and Hubert (eds). Booth, K., et al. (2001), ‘Introduction: How Might We Live? Global Ethics in a New Century’, How Might We Live? Global Ethics in the New Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Bush, G.W. (2002), ‘President Outlines US Plan to Help World’s Poor’, Remarks by the President at United Nations Financing for D evelopment Conference, Cintermex Convention Center, Monterrey, Mexico, , accessed 7 February 2008. Buzan, B. (2004), ‘A Reductionist, Idealistic Notion’, Security Dialogue 35:3, 369–70. Call, C. (ed.) (2007), Constructing Justice and Security after War (Washington, D C: US Institute of Peace). Carafano, J.. and Smith, J. (2006), ‘The Muddled Notion of “Human Security” at the UN: A Guide for US Policymakers’, The Backgrounder 1966, 1–14, <www. heritage.org/Research/WorldwideFreedom/upload/bg_1966.pdf>, accessed 23 March 2007. Commission on Human Security (CHS) (2003a), Human Security Now (New York: United Nations), , accessed 5 March 2008. — (2003b), ‘Outline of the Report of the Commission on Human Security’, , accessed 5 March 2008. D ingwerth, K., and Pattberg, P. (2006), ‘Global Governance as a Perspective on World Politics’, Global Governance 12:2, 185–203. Emmers, R. (2004), ‘Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific: Evolution of Concepts and Practices’, in Tan, S., and Acharya, A. (eds). Fawn, R., and Larkins, J. (eds) (1996), International Society After the Cold War: Anarchy and Order Reconsidered (London: Macmillan). Glasius, M., and Kaldor, M. (eds) (2006), A Human Security Doctrine for Europe: Project, Principles, Practicalities (New York: Routledge). Harbour, F. (1999), Thinking about International Ethics: Moral Theory and Cases from American Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). High-Level Panel (2004), A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility (Geneva: United Nations), , accessed 7 July 2008. Hoge, W. (2008), ‘Intervention, Hailed as a Concept, is Shunned in Practice’, The New York Times (published online 20 January 2008), , accessed 28 February 2008. Hubert, D . (2004), ‘An Idea that Works in Practice’, Security Dialogue 35:3, 351–2. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) (2001), The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa: International D evelopment Research Centre). Jackson, R. (1993), Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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Fr o m St at e Sec ur it y t o Human Sec ur it y? Kim, S. (1984), ‘Global Violence and a Just World Order’, Journal of Peace Research 21:2, 181–92. Kuper, A. (2004), Democracy Beyond Borders: Justice and Representation in Global Institutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press). MacFarlane, S.N., and Khong, Y.F. (2006), Human Security and the UN: A Critical History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). Maclean, S.J., et al. (eds) (2006), A Decade of Human Security: Global Governance and New Multilateralisms (Aldershot: Ashgate). McRae, R., and Hubert, D . (eds) (2001), Human Security and the New Diplomacy: Protecting People, Promoting Peace (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press). Nardin, T. (1993), ‘Ethical Traditions in International Affairs’, in Nardin and Mapel (eds). — and Mapel, D . (eds) (1993), Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Newman, E. (2004), ‘A Normatively Attractive but Analytically Weak Concept’, Security Dialogue 35:3, 358–9. Ogata, S. (2002), ‘From State Security to Human Security’, Ogden Lecture, Brown University, , accessed 30 January 2008. Owen, T. (2004), ‘Human Security – Conflict, Critique and Consensus: Colloquium Remarks and a Proposal for a Threshold-Based D efinition’, Security Dialogue 35:3, 373–87. Paris, R. (2001), ‘Human Security: Paradigm Shift or Hot Air?’, International Security 26:2, 87–102. — (2004), ‘Still an Inscrutable Concept’, Security Dialogue 35:3, 370–71. Polgreen, L. (2008), ‘China, in New Role, Presses D arfur’, The New York Times (published online 23 February 2008), , accessed 23 February 2008. Roosevelt, F. (1941), ‘Annual Message to Congress’ (‘The “Four Freedoms” Speech’), , accessed 3 March 2008. Shklar, J. (1990), The Faces of Injustice (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Smillie, I. (2006), ‘Whose Security? Innovation and Responsibility, Perception and Reality’, in Maclean et al. (eds). Tan, S., and Acharya, A. (2004), Asia-Pacific Security Cooperation: National Interests and Regional Order (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe). United Nations D evelopment Programme (UND P) (1994), Human Development Report, 1994 (New York: Oxford University Press), , accessed 28 March 2007. United Nations Security Council (UNSC) (2007), ‘Security Council Report SC/9105’ (published online 28 August 2008), , accessed 5 March 2008. Wheeler, N., and Morris, J. (1996), ‘Humanitarian Intervention and State Practice at the End of the Cold War’, in Fawn, R., and Larkins, J. (eds).

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10 Ethics and Weapons of Mass D estruction Steven P. Lee

The use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD ) in warfare is not new, and may be as old as warfare itself. Historical evidence suggests that the use of biological weapons may be at least 3,300 years old. Ancient texts have recently provided evidence that in the Middle East around 1320 BCE the Hittites sent rams infected with the bacterial disease tularemia (rabbit fever) to their enemies, the Arzawans, after which an outbreak of tularemia ravaged the Arzawan community. Although the evidence of intentionality is not completely clear, one may reasonably speculate that the Hittites released the rams to the Arzawans in order to infect them (Khamsi 2007). If so, this would be the earliest documented use of biological weapons in war. WMD have long been seen as raising special moral problems. In this chapter, I consider the questions of whether WMD are morally special, as in common perception they are, and, if so, what makes them so. The morality of war is traditionally divided into jus ad bellum, pertaining to the morality of engaging in war, and jus in bello, pertaining to the morality of how war is fought. Issues of the ethics of WMD lie within jus in bello, as the use of these weapons is a matter of how a war is fought. Historically, jus in bello rules have included those prohibiting the use of certain kinds of weapons, such as crossbows (among Christians, at least), dum-dum bullets and some WMD . An interesting question about such rules is whether they are merely conventional, rules adopted by agreement to reduce the overall suffering of war, or instead express a deeper moral prohibition on behavior. Examining the ethical nature of WMD may throw some light on this broader question.



This chapter is a further development of the material in my earlier essay, ‘Weapons of Mass D estruction: Are They Morally Special?’ in May (ed.) (2008); some of the passages in this chapter are adapted from the latter.

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Which Weapons are WMD? Traditionally, nuclear, biological and chemical weapons (NBC weapons) have been regarded as the three different types of WMD . These three types of weapons, regarded as WMD , are singled out for special legal opprobrium. Their status under international law is distinct from that of other weapons, which, to draw the contrast, are referred to as conventional weapons. Under international treaty, the possession of biological and chemical weapons is prohibited. Nuclear weapons have a somewhat different legal status; their possession is not outlawed, at least for the major nuclear powers, but there are important legal restrictions on their use. WMD have been regarded with strong moral opprobrium as well, and our question is whether and why this opprobrium is appropriate. A good way to begin the discussion is to inquire about whether it is appropriate for weapons of these three types to be conjoined into the category ‘WMD ’. Is the conflation justified? Is the use of a single term to encompass all three types of weapons coherent and useful? For us there is an additional question: if the conflation of NBC weapons into the category of WMD is justified, is the feature in virtue of which they are appropriately aggregated morally relevant? Even if the single category combining them is justified on some grounds, the basis of the conflation may not be morally relevant. For example, if there is a special moral objection to dum-dum bullets, then the appropriateness of combining different kinds of projectiles into the category ‘bullets’ to that extent lacks moral relevance. The morally relevant category in this case is more fine-grained. Here is an example from the other direction. It may be appropriate to group together all different sorts of large explosive projectiles into the single category of ‘artillery shells’, but the reason for this may not be morally relevant; perhaps what is morally relevant about artillery shells is something they share with weapons beyond that category, like other forms of explosives, such as mortars. It may be that the category WMD is inappropriate because it is either too broad or too narrow; and even if it is appropriate from a non-moral perspective, it may not be appropriate from a moral perspective. On the other hand, if there is a morally relevant feature that justifies the WMD aggregation, this feature may be the one we are looking for, the one that makes WMD morally special. Let us begin with a common criticism of the grouping. A number of authors have questioned the conflation of NBC weapons into a single category, though usually not explicitly in a way that touches on the issue of moral relevance. They argue that ‘WMD ’ should be ‘deconflated’ because the characteristic of mass destruction, on its face, simply does not apply to all three of the subsidiary types. The term ‘mass destruction’ does not apply to all three types of weapons (nor even to all of the weapons within each type). To understand the basis of this claim, consider briefly the nature of NBC weapons.  

For a discussion of these and other matters concerning the legal status of WMD , see Szasz (2004), 43–70, and especially 51–65. This expression is due to George Perkovich, ‘D econflating “WMD ”’, a 2004 paper by the Weapons of Mass D estruction Commission. 168

Et h ic s and Weapo ns o f Mass Dest r uc t io n Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction par excellence. Harnessing the tremendous energies that bind the nuclei of atoms, nuclear blasts are measured in the thousands or millions of tons of TNT equivalent. A single nuclear bomb can destroy a city, through blast and fire. In addition, it can create airborne radiation that can do harm at a considerable distance in space and time from the site of the explosion. In contrast, chemical weapons are much less lethal. Chemical weapons are poisons that cause harm through direct contact. Compared with conventional explosives, they are less lethal, kilogram for kilogram, and are more difficult to use (Easterbrook 2002, 22). D uring World War I, only two to three per cent of the military personnel subject to poison gas attacks died, while those wounded by conventional weapons were ten to twelve times more likely to die, and it took over a tonne of gas, on average, to kill a single soldier (Mueller and Mueller 1999, 47). Of course, modern chemical weapons, including nerve agents such as sarin, are more deadly. For example, one prediction is that a ton of sarin delivered perfectly under ideal conditions over a densely inhabited and unprepared area might produce three to eight thousand deaths. But if the conditions were less than ideal (for example, if the sun was shining or there were a light breeze) the death rate could be reduced by 90 per cent (ibid.). Chemical weapons are not only much less destructive than nuclear weapons, but, in some cases, even less destructive than equivalent measures of conventional explosives. Biological weapons are between nuclear and chemical weapons in destructiveness. Biological weapons are living microorganisms, such as anthrax, deployed to cause harm to humans through reproducing in their bodies. They are potentially much more lethal than chemical weapons. For example, kilogram for kilogram, anthrax is capable of producing lethal concentrations over an area one thousand times larger than sarin (Martin 2004, 32). An attack with less than 100 kilograms of aerosolized anthrax spores could result in three million casualties, ‘rivaling the lethality of a thermonuclear weapon’ (Koblentz 2003, 88). The potential destructiveness of biological weapons is suggested by the fact that the influenza pandemic of 1918, the sort of event that biological weapons in the future might cause, killed an estimated 20 million people (Steinbruner, 1997, 85). Because biological agents are alive, they may adapt and mutate into more virulent forms (ibid., 87–8). At the same time, there remains a major gap between theory and practice in the case of biological weapons. In practice, these weapons are hard to manufacture and hard to use, ‘for many of the same reasons that medicines are hard to make and don’t work unless administered precisely’ (Easterbrook 2002, 24). While it may be fairly easy to culture at least some biological agents, such as anthrax, turning the agents into a useable and effective weapon is, for a number of reasons, much more difficult (Martin 2004, 32). This gap is important because, in judging the destructiveness of a weapon, practical difficulties such as the uncertainties of its effects must be taken into account in the estimation. The relevant measure is expected destructiveness, a function of our reasonable expectations about the effects of its application under real world conditions. The expected destructiveness of biological weapons is significantly less than their ideal or potential destructiveness. In contrast, expected destructiveness of nuclear weapons is much closer to their ideal or potential destructiveness, given 169

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns the high reliability of the weapons, once developed, and the lack of any effective defenses against them. So, the expected destructiveness of biological weapons is likely substantially less than that of nuclear weapons. From the perspective of expected destructiveness, then, the traditional category of WMD seems not to be an appropriate grouping. The implication is that ‘WMD ’ should be deconflated. With all NBC weapons included, ‘WMD ’ is too broad. Chemical weapons do not cause mass destruction, neither in an absolute sense, since they may be less lethal than conventional explosives, nor in a relative sense, in that they are orders of magnitude less lethal than nuclear and (likely) biological weapons. In terms of destructiveness, if chemical weapons were included as WMD , then conventional explosives would have to be included as well, given their roughly equal level of destructiveness, and the contrast with conventional weapons that ‘WMD ’ is meant to represent would be lost. Chemical weapons, and perhaps biological weapons, should be withdrawn from the category. As one commentator notes: ‘Subsuming these three types of weapons under the rubric of “weapons of mass destruction” approaches the disingenuous. Biological and chemical weapons are not weapons of mass destruction’ (Morrison and Tsipis 2003, 77). What the term ‘weapons of mass destruction’ implies about the nature of all WMD is inaccurate Moreover, more than simply being inaccurate, the conflation of NBC weapons is misleading and dangerous. One problem is that ‘imprecision in analyzing and talking about “WMD ” threats obscures important policy choices’. For example, in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2002–03, concern about Iraq’s WMD arsenal was used extensively by supporters of the war to promote the idea that the US should invade, but this argument made it difficult to provide a ‘rigorous cost/benefit analysis of the war’ (Perkovich 2004, 4–9). Whether the alleged WMD capacity was chemical or nuclear would have made a great deal of difference in the strength of the case for the war. The use of ‘WMD ’ obscured this difference. To lump the three together takes our eye off the much greater danger residing in some of them rather than others. So, NBC weapons do not all share the characteristic of being capable of causing massive destruction. This characteristic, though it fails to justify the conflation of NBC weapons, is clearly relevant from a military perspective. It is also relevant from a moral perspective. The rules of jus in bello are concerned to reduce the destructiveness of war, so it is certainly a morally relevant feature of a weapon that it is capable of massive destruction. But perhaps we should not give up on the traditional term ‘WMD ’ quite yet. There may be another characteristic that not only applies to all (and only) NBC weapons (whether ‘WMD ’ is an appropriate name for the category), but which also is of moral relevance. This is the possibility I now explore.



But this claim should be qualified in two respects. First, the current practical impediments in the manufacture and use of biological weapons may be overcome by future technological developments; and second, recent developments in biotechnology hold out the prospect for the development of biological agents whose potential destructiveness is much greater. 170

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Weapons of Indiscriminate Destruction (WID) It may seem surprising that people have continued to use ‘WMD ’ to include all of the NBC weapons, when it should be obvious to anyone at all familiar with these weapons that not all of them are capable of massive destruction. Why do people stubbornly continue to use the label in this way? It may be that they implicitly recognise that there is a different characteristic that does justify the conflation, and one that is also morally relevant, which would then explain both the aggregation and the popular moral opprobrium toward WMD . We can get an indication of what this characteristic might be if we consider the two main principles of jus in bello, proportionality and discrimination. Proportionality is concerned with the total amount of damage expected from fighting in war, and the characteristic of mass destructiveness would be relevant in this regard. D iscrimination, on the other hand, is concerned not with the amount of damage, but rather with the question of to whom the damage is done. This principle calls for combatants to discriminate in who they attack, targeting only enemy combatants, not civilians. A serious moral wrong is to be indiscriminate in one’s use of military force, attacking civilians as well as combatants. Perhaps it is this characteristic that can unite all NBC weapons in a morally relevant way, both justifying the traditional WMD category and showing its moral importance. But a conceptual problem arises from trying to claim that WMD are indiscriminate weapons. Combatants’ actions, not the weapons they use, are what are classified as discriminate or indiscriminate. It seems that a weapon is discriminate or indiscriminate not in itself, but only in how it is used. Its discriminateness is a function not of the kind of weapon it is, but on the uses to which it is put. An explosive can be dropped on a rural military outpost or on an elementary school, its use being discriminate in the first case and indiscriminate in the second. Weapons do not kill civilians; combatants kill civilians. The most we could say about a weapon is that it is contingently indiscriminate, indiscriminate when used indiscriminately (and of course also contingently discriminate). But some weapons are harder to use, or less likely to be used, discriminately. This suggests, at one end of such a scale, the possibility that some weapons either cannot be used discriminately, or, more weakly, are unlikely to be used discriminately. If there were such weapons, we could label them as inherently indiscriminate, meaning indiscriminate in all of their possible or likely uses. My argument will be that all three kinds of WMD are inherently indiscriminate. Consider nuclear weapons. Some claim that they are so powerful that any use of them will kill large numbers of civilians, which would make them inherently indiscriminate. On the contrary, however, while this claim was true early in the nuclear age, when the weapons were very large and not accurately deliverable, does it remain true today, when greater accuracy of delivery has gone hand in hand with reduction in yield of the individual nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons 

Some of the argument in the next few paragraphs is taken from Hashmi and Lee (2004), ‘Introduction’, in Hashmi and Lee (eds). 171

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns have come to be regarded as ‘counterforce’ rather than ‘countervalue’ weapons, meaning that they could be effectively used against compact military targets rather than sprawling civilian targets, like cities. But this is not the whole story. First, it is unlikely that an attack with nuclear weapons by an established nuclear state would involve only a single warhead; if one military target were to be attacked, probably several would be, and this larger number would probably include military targets near to or in cities, resulting in many civilian deaths. Second, if one state uses nuclear weapons, others are likely to use them in retaliation, and a serious risk of escalation would result. One cannot view the use of a single weapon in isolation, and with the use of many weapons would come massive civilian deaths. In general, it is not a reasonable expectation that the use of nuclear weapons, between nuclear powers, could be kept to a small number. Understood in context, then, nuclear weapons cannot be used without a high likelihood of massive civilian deaths, and this is why they are inherently indiscriminate. The situation with biological and chemical weapons is different, though the conclusion is the same. These weapons are not very useful militarily, at least at the tactical level (see Roberts and Moodie 2002, 2; Martin 2002, 71–6). Their effects are not very controllable or predictable. They are subject to local environmental conditions, such as wind and sunlight, and their deleterious effects on combatants may be delayed (especially in the case of biological weapons), so that they may be of little help in an ongoing battle. In addition, they are unable to destroy weapons and military infrastructure, and combatants can protect themselves from the weapons with respirators, special clothing or inoculations (Chevrier 1993, 409). Biological and chemical weapons might be effective at the operational or theatre level (that is, at the level of attacks against military infrastructure), but such uses occur not on the battlefield, but in rear positions likely to be in populated areas (Koblentz 2003, 99–100). Moreover, in such attacks civilians are more likely to die than combatants because civilians are less likely to have special forms of protection (Szasz 2004, 43). But biological weapons do have strategic, countervalue uses directly against population centers and economic targets. Thus, chemical and biological weapons, if they are used at all, are likely to be used in ways that involve the deaths of large numbers of civilians. They are unlikely to be used tactically, where massive civilian deaths might be avoided, because they are generally not militarily effective at that level, or not as effective as alternative conventional means. In this sense, chemical and biological weapons also are inherently indiscriminate; like nuclear weapons, they are unlikely to be used without large-scale civilian casualties. Given the impact their use would have on civilians, NBC weapons are all terror weapons.  

For a discussion of the role of biological weapons at the strategic levels see Martin (2002), 76–80. Admittedly, this sense of ‘inherently indiscriminate’ is weaker than the sense that it is impossible to use NBC weapons in a discriminate way, and closer to the sense that it is practically impossible, or almost impossible so to use them. But this weaker sense is sufficient to establish these weapons as morally different from conventional weapons, all of which can readily be used discriminately. 172

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Intentionality and Lethality The claim that NBC weapons are all inherently indiscriminate, however, faces two further objections. First is the issue of the intentionality with which these weapons might be used. Second is the fact that some biological and chemical weapons may be non-lethal. The first of these objections is a more elaborate way of presenting the earlier criticism that it is not the weapons themselves, but the uses of them, that are discriminate or indiscriminate. The issue of intention figures prominently in our understanding of discrimination. What this principle prohibits are attacks directed at civilians, where their destruction is part of what is intended in the attack. The principle does not rule out all attacks that happen to have civilian casualties. This is indicated by the principle’s being interpreted under the doctrine of double effect, which holds that an attacker is not fully responsible for those effects of the attack that are foreseen but not intended. Merely foreseen civilian deaths are not ruled out by the principle of discrimination. Thus, even a necessarily indiscriminate weapon could be used in a discriminate way, if one’s intentions in the attack are not directed at civilians. This criticism, however, fails to recognise that, because WMD have few or no effective counterforce uses, they are almost certain to be used, if they are used, in a countervalue way. WMD are good at killing civilians, and this is about the only thing they are good at, at least compared with conventional weapons, so any use of them can be expected to be for this purpose, even if in theory one could use them for a counterforce purpose. The indiscriminate intention would almost always be there. Analogously, although one could use a sledgehammer to kill flies, the claim that one was not intending the great havoc that the use of a sledgehammer would involve is not plausible. If you were merely going after the flies, you would have used another tool. This point is strengthened by considering the role of deterrence in military policy. States acquire weapons, in part at least, to deter their use by others. For the sake of deterrence, it is important for a state to have weapons of the same magnitude of effect as those of its opponents because otherwise the deterrent may not be credible. If state A is capable of imposing much more damage on state B than B is on A, then B’s threat of military retaliation against A will lack credibility because A has a higher level of damage it can threaten in response. This deterrent logic is especially true in the case of WMD , which have effects that conventional weapons do not. States believe that only the possession of WMD can effectively deter WMD attacks. This is why the dynamic behind nuclear proliferation has historically been the felt need of states to acquire nuclear weapons once their opponents had them. So, if two opponents have WMD , each will intend to use them to kill the other’s civilians because having this intention is a crucial part of an effective deterrent threat against the other’s use of them. Thus, the threat of retaliation by WMD must be a countervalue threat, not (or not only) a counterforce threat. The inherent indiscriminateness of these weapons ensures that, if used against an opponent with WMD , they will be used with an indiscriminate intention.

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns This has an important moral implication, namely, that when weapons are inherently indiscriminate, as NBC weapons are, it is not only their use in war that is morally prohibited, but their possession as well. They are possessed for the sake of deterrence, and deterrence involves threats to use the weapons, and these threats are threats of indiscriminate retaliation. Such threats are ruled out by the principle of discrimination because they involve a (conditional) intention to attack indiscriminately. The deterrer must have a commitment to actual use of the weapons, if attacked, since a bluff is unlikely to be effective. The principle of discrimination requires that one’s military intentions be discriminate, and because deterrence with inherently indiscriminate weapons necessarily involves an indiscriminate intention, such a policy, and therefore possession of the weapons for its sake, is morally unacceptable. The second objection concerns the differences not among the three types of WMD , but within two of the three types, biological and chemical weapons. My claim has been that all NBC weapons belong in the WMD category, but an alternative view is that, while all nuclear weapons belong in this category, not all BC weapons do. Some forms of chemical weapons are incapacitating but not lethal, and the same may be true for some forms of biological weapons as well. Tear gas, for example, is a non-lethal chemical weapon. While the use of non-lethal agents in war may, strictly speaking, be indiscriminate, to the extent that it is directed at civilians, if the resulting harm, such as being rendered briefly unconscious, is little more than an inconvenience for its victims, there is reason to treat this harm as much less morally problematic than the civilian harm imposed by lethal forms of WMD . This would be a reason to exclude non-lethal chemical and biological weapons from the category of WMD understood as a group of weapons that share a common morally relevant property. The traditional concept of WMD would then be too broad not because one or two of the three types of weapons should be excluded, but because some of one or two of the kinds should be excluded. On this view, WMD as a morally relevant category would include all nuclear weapons but only the lethal forms of biological and chemical weapons. I have no problem with such a conclusion, since my main purpose has been to determine why WMD are morally special. Having determined that it is their inherent indiscriminateness, I feel free to drop whatever members within each of the three kinds of WMD fail to satisfy this criterion. But there is more to be said on the matter. The distinction between acceptable and unacceptable (non-lethal and lethal) chemical and biological weapons is difficult to draw. The alleged distinction is similar to the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable (counterforce and countervalue) nuclear weapons. Part of the argument, outlined earlier, against the relevance of the latter distinction is that any counterforce use of nuclear weapons is very likely to be part of, or to escalate to, a nuclear exchange involving large-scale civilian deaths. So, counterforce uses of nuclear weapons should be regarded as inherently indiscriminate because they are likely to be part of an indiscriminate attack or to initiate an indiscriminate exchange. One implication of this is that it is unlikely that a firebreak could be 

There is an excellent discussion of these issues in Quester (1974). 174

Et h ic s and Weapo ns o f Mass Dest r uc t io n maintained between counterforce and countervalue uses of nuclear weapons. To avoid indiscriminate destruction, it is much more effective to have a firebreak between conventional and nuclear weapons (since this is a distinction that can be easily drawn) than between two kinds of uses of nuclear weapons. There is an analogous argument against the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable chemical and biological weapons. The use of acceptable (non-lethal) chemical and biological weapons is likely to lead to the use of unacceptable (lethal) forms or other indiscriminate weapons. The timescale for such escalation may be more extended than in the nuclear case, but perhaps as inexorable. Once the barrier between conventional weapons and chemical or biological weapons has been crossed by the use of non-lethal forms of the latter, lethal forms of these weapons will very likely be used when they are seen to be useful from a countervalue perspective. Better that the firebreak be between BC weapons and conventional weapons, not between different sorts of BC weapons. The problem in line-drawing is exacerbated by the difficulty in making the distinction at all. The difference is a matter of degree rather than a difference in kind. All biological and chemical agents will probably kill some and merely sicken others, depending on the conditions of the victim and the environment. In the case of a ‘lethal’ gas, those further out from the centre of the attack and more on the fringes of the attack cloud will not receive a lethal dose and may only be sickened. In the case of a ‘non-lethal’ gas, the strength needed to render unconscious most of those in the attack area will likely guarantee that some of those at the centre of the attack cloud will die. The gas will be more concentrated at the centre than at the fringes, and the more concentrated it is, the more likely the victims will die instead of merely being rendered unconscious. Couple this with the fact that the ratio of those killed to those only sickened or rendered unconscious will vary widely depending on the environment of the target area. So, how does one draw the lethal/non-lethal line? In addition, civilians are more likely to die whichever agent is used because they are, on average, physically weaker than combatants and have less access to protection. Effective prohibitions depend on sharp linedrawings or firebreaks, which is why the goal of prohibiting lethal chemical and biological weapons is much more achievable when the rule is to ban all chemical and biological weapons. Such considerations provide a strong pragmatic argument for regarding all forms of chemical and biological weapons, whatever their degree of lethality, as included within the category of WMD . Given the firebreak problem, if our concern, from the perspective of discrimination, is to prohibit the use of all inherently indiscriminate weapons, a better rule to promote, and for that purpose to embody in our definition, is one that prohibits all forms of those weapons, many of whose forms are inherently indiscriminate. This would yield the following rough definition of WMD : weapons of mass destruction are those weapons that either are themselves inherently indiscriminate or are in classes of weapons many of whose members are inherently indiscriminate (see Hashmi and Lee 2004, 10). Weapons are inherently indiscriminate when their use is very likely to involve (or lead to) the killing of large numbers of civilians. This definition implies that all 175

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns nuclear, biological and chemical weapons should be included as WMD , from the perspective of the principle of discrimination, and this affirms the content of the traditional concept of WMD . A good definition, however, should provide both necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of a term. In the discussion so far, I have focused on inherent indiscriminateness (or the more complicated form of this condition in the above definition) as a necessary condition by asking whether, in terms of this feature, the traditional concept of WMD is too broad. But if this condition is also regarded as sufficient, the traditional concept may be too narrow. Perhaps there are weapons besides NBC weapons that are inherently indiscriminate, and, from the perspective of discrimination, the traditional concept should be expanded. A number of suggestions have been made for additions to the WMD category; for example, antipersonnel land mines, cluster bombs, and radiological weapons. All three appear, on our characterisation, to be inherently indiscriminate. Many civilians have been killed (or maimed) by landmines and cluster bombs left over after a battle or a war, and a significant number of such deaths would seem to be inevitable, given the nature of the weapons. Radiological weapons (‘dirty bombs’, conventional explosives designed to disperse radioactive material) seem clearly to be weapons with no apparent counterforce military purpose, but simply designed to terrorise civilians and disrupt civilian activities. So, there is good reason to expand the traditional category of WMD to include these and perhaps other kinds of weapons, which is to say, there is a strong moral argument in terms of the principle of discrimination to prohibit them. But focusing on discrimination rather than proportionality as the moral principle in virtue of which it is appropriate to group NBC weapons as WMD implies that the traditional category of WMD , though appropriately constituted, is misnamed. As we have seen, it is not mass destructiveness that unites NBC weapons. Wolfgang Panofsky observes that this grouping would be more appropriately named ‘weapons of indiscriminate destruction’ (Panofsky 1998, 4). Indeed, a more descriptively accurate name for WMD is weapons of indiscriminate destruction (WID ). So, the tradition of grouping NBC weapons together, yielding the traditional category of WMD , is justified by the morally relevant feature they share (though this grouping is better named WID than WMD ). The feature is that weapons of these types are inherently indiscriminate, and thus involve an indiscriminate intention, whether in use or in mere possession for the sake of deterrence. One thing this shows, by the way, is that the conventions against the use of WMD that are historically part of just war theory are not mere conventions but arise from a deeper moral foundation. They are morally defensible independent of their being matters of international agreement because the principle of discrimination which underlies the prohibition of these weapons, I would argue, is not itself a mere convention, but is rooted in the moral right of all individuals not be attacked unless they have done something that justifies such an attack.

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Weapons of Assured Destruction (WAD) But, after having so far attempted to link NBC weapons from a moral perspective, I now take a different tack for the remainder of the chapter. While NBC weapons are indeed connected in this morally relevant way (through inherent indiscriminateness), from a different moral perspective it is appropriate to distinguish among the three types. There is another feature of nuclear weapons (and perhaps biological weapons) with special moral relevance. Nuclear weapons are a strategic deterrent; that is, through their countervalue capability, they create deterrence at the strategic, not the tactical (or counterforce), level. More specifically, nuclear weapons allow for a capacity known as assured destruction (AD ), and thus may be referred to as weapons of assured destruction (WAD ). Nuclear weapons are so powerful that they make it possible for one state to destroy another. A relatively small number of nuclear weapons can destroy the several largest cities of a state, effectively putting an end to it as an organised political entity, and no defense against such an attack is possible. More than this, if a state’s nuclear warhead delivery systems are relatively invulnerable to surprise attack, as is now usually the case, it has a ‘second strike nuclear force’, meaning that it has a capacity to destroy its opponent even after being struck first. This is an AD capacity. When opponents each have an AD capacity, they are in a relationship of mutual assured destruction (MAD ). This was the relationship of the US and the Soviet Union during most of the Cold War. Many strategists regard MAD as a very stable condition, greatly lessening the likelihood of war. Each opponent recognises that any war between them would likely lead to its own destruction, so that there could be no overall benefits to aggression. There is consequently a great disincentive to initiate war. The possibility of the MAD relationship came into existence during the Cold War, with the development of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, but it is not historically limited to that time period. MAD is a permanent possibility created by our technological capacities. It exists now, for example, in the relationships between the US and China and between India and Pakistan. D o other WMD make possible an AD capacity and a MAD relationship? Chemical weapons do not because they are, relatively speaking, not very destructive, not destructive enough to threaten the existence of a state. What about biological weapons? We saw earlier that biological weapons rival (and perhaps even exceed) nuclear weapons in potential destructiveness, though, due to practical difficulties, their expected destructiveness is less. In theory, biological weapons could destroy a society not by flattening its cities, but by killing its people and the agriculture on which human life depends, suggesting that they could become a strategic deterrent creating the possibility of an AD capacity and a MAD relationship. The case for biological weapons as a strategic deterrent is offered by Susan Martin. ‘Like nuclear weapons, biological weapons are primarily useful as a strategic deterrent’ (Martin 2002, 63). She grants that there are differences between nuclear and biological weapons, but argues that biological weapons can be a strategic 

For a discussion of AD in its historical context, see Freedman (1981), 245–56. 177

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns deterrent nonetheless. The reason is that ‘effective deterrence requires only a small possibility of great destruction’ (ibid., 76–80). Though biological weapons could not destroy a state with the swiftness or certainty of nuclear weapons, the effectiveness of the threat does not require such speed and certainty. This is the view that strategic deterrence through the capacity for AD is rugged, meaning that it is effective even when the likelihood of the retaliatory societal destruction is significantly less than certain. Societal destruction is such a catastrophic outcome that any leader of a state would act cautiously in the face of its prospect, even when that prospect falls well short of a certainty. Whether or not biological weapons can create an AD capacity, chemical weapons cannot, so the characteristic of creating an AD capacity does not apply to all three types of WMD or WID . Nuclear weapons, and perhaps biological weapons, unlike chemical weapons, are not only WID but also weapons of assured destruction (WAD ), in that they create an AD capacity. Is the characteristic of creating an AD capacity, like the characteristic of inherent indiscriminateness, morally relevant? I argue that it is (see Lee 1993). As we have seen, the mere possession of WID is morally unacceptable because possessing them involves the deterrent intention to attack with them, which is an intention to attack indiscriminately. But things may be morally different when a state’s WID are also WAD and the state faces an opponent that has such weapons as well, creating a MAD relationship. Because having an AD capacity is morally unacceptable, the same should be true of being a party to a MAD relationship. But there are moral complications to a MAD relationship that go beyond the moral status of having an AD capacity considered by itself. MAD is a state of mutual deterrence in which each side makes countervalue threats (threats to destroy the other’s society) in order to dissuade the other from carrying out its own countervalue threats. When each side in a MAD relationship is considered by itself, it is doing what is morally unacceptable by possessing WID , but when each side is viewed in the context of the AD capacity of its opponent, matters are not so clear. Earlier I argued that a state must have WMD or WID to effectively deter an opponent such weapons, based on the claim that the only effective way to deter an opponent is to threaten that opponent with a level of harm as severe as that which the opponent threatens. Otherwise the opponent might not be deterred from engaging in aggression at a lower level of harm, expecting that the state would not retaliate out of fear that the opponent would then impose the severe harm that the state is, by hypothesis, incapable of inflicting in response. If the opponent has an AD capacity, and so threatens societal destruction, the state must, to deter the opponent, be capable of making a threat of equal severity; that is, it must have its own AD capacity. The moral complication is that a state morally has a right to have such a capacity in such a situation because this is a matter of its own defense. This implies that participating in a MAD relationship, being a case of self-defense, is morally permissible. This is an implication of jus ad bellum. Thus, being part of a MAD relationship is permissible according to jus ad bellum, while being morally prohibited, as involving indiscriminate intentions, under jus in bello. This is the moral paradox created by nuclear weapons, and perhaps by biological weapons as well. When an opponent has an AD capacity, a state is morally entitled to an AD 178

Et h ic s and Weapo ns o f Mass Dest r uc t io n capacity of its own, but the possession of this latter capacity, involving indiscriminate intentions, is morally prohibited. In a sense, WAD place jus ad bellum and jus in bello in conflict with each other. The problem is that in traditional just war theory, the restrictions and permissions of jus ad bellum are not conditioned on the restrictions or permissions of jus in bello, and vice versa. Weapons with the capacity for AD throw just war theory into inconsistency and thereby challenge our traditional moral understanding of military force.

WID or WAD? Thus, the potential to create an AD capacity is a morally relevant characteristic because it allows a situation in which there is a moral conflict between permissible self-defense and prohibited indiscriminate threats. WAD are impermissible to possess by themselves, but at the same time permissible to possess when one’s opponent has them. Having an AD capacity alone is impermissible, but being part of a MAD relationship, which requires having an AD capacity, is also not. This is an argument, then, that nuclear and (perhaps) biological weapons should be grouped together, under the label WAD , to the exclusion of chemical weapons. This argument for the deconflation of the traditional WMD category tracks the earlier argument for deconflation of the category, which was based on the claim that not all the weapons included under the traditional category are capable of mass destruction. The reason for this is not far to see. Being able to cause mass destruction is what is needed to create an AD capacity. So, there are moral reasons for the WID grouping (which is the traditional WMD grouping) and moral reasons for a new WAD grouping. Each grouping is based on a morally relevant characteristic. The problem is that some WID are also WAD . There is, of course, no question of which grouping is the correct one, as we are free, so long as there is some commonality, to define groupings any way we choose. But there are pragmatic arguments for doing this one way rather than another. There are some strong pragmatic arguments for emphasising the WID grouping over the WAD grouping. I spoke earlier of the stubborn way in which people cling to the practice of grouping NBC weapons together, under the traditional WMD label, despite obvious differences in destructiveness among them. The WID grouping (under the label WMD ) corresponds to the way that NBC weapons are grouped in common parlance, and, more importantly, the preference for this grouping exhibits itself in the common moral abhorrence people have toward all of the weapons in the grouping. This moral abhorrence is the basis of a taboo or moral convention that has grown against the use of these weapons. This taboo is based in part on the characteristic that NBC weapons share, namely, their inherent indiscriminateness. It is probably also based on repugnance toward the ways in which lethal chemicals, disease organisms and nuclear radiation do their human damage. In any case, we have every reason to strengthen this taboo. Because NBC weapons are grouped

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns together by a general moral abhorrence, leading to the creation and strengthening of a taboo against the use of any of them, it is useful to keep them grouped together. Nina Tannenwald, who has written extensively on the nuclear part of the WID taboo, observes: Recently, some analysts have suggested that nuclear weapons should be categorized separately from chemical and biological weapons because nuclear weapons are much more lethal, and because the latter two are not really weapons of mass destruction. The nuclear taboo, however, benefits from its discursive association with formally banned weapons (2005, 48). The analysts she is speaking of are some of those we cited earlier as arguing for WMD deconflation. But, as she claims, the association among NBC weapons, under the WID grouping, strengthens the nuclear taboo. I suggest that the taboos against the use of each of these types of weapons are mutually reinforcing. (The taboo against the use and possession of chemical and biological weapons is shown in their being prohibited, as Tannenwald notes, under international law.) The mutually reinforcing taboos within the WID grouping are a strong reason keeping the connection among these weapons present to consciousness, and so is a reason for emphasising the WID grouping. But, unfortunately, taboos are double-edged. There are indeed some pragmatic arguments against emphasising the WID grouping. Taboos are great so long as they work, but when they fail, they may subsequently fail wholesale, especially when the original failure does not cause the sky to fall. An ‘anything goes’ attitude can result: once you have slept with your mother, is there anything you cannot do? This negative tendency of a taboo is a reason to emphasise the WAD grouping over the WID grouping. Of course, this is a highly contingent matter, and a failure of a taboo can in some circumstances lead to its being strengthened. This contingency is seen in the speculation about whether a single ‘successful’ use of a nuclear weapon would lead to more general use of such weapons or instead to a redoubling of humanity’s commitment never to use them again. The danger from such a taboo abandonment may be greater in the case we are considering, given the way in which the weapons it covers do differ in destructive potential. It is possible, for example, that the breaking of the WID taboo by the ‘successful’ use of chemical weapons could lead to a further breaking of the taboo in the case of nuclear weapons.10 Nothing about nuclear weapons, in particular, or WID in general, is morally simple or straightforward.

10 This possibility may be behind the concern some analysts had regarding the apparent threat by the first Bush administration of nuclear retaliation against Iraq should it have used chemical weapons in the first Gulf War. The situation is described in Sagan (2004), at p. 81. The concern was that such a threat would increase the risk of nuclear use. This possibility is also behind the concern, referred to earlier, that people had about the roll of the term ‘WMD ’ in the arguments for the 2003 Iraq invasion. 180

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References Chevrier, M. (1993), ‘D eliberate D isease: Biological Weapons, Threats, and Policy Responses’, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 11:4, 395–417. Easterbrook, G. (2002), ‘Term Limits’, The New Republic 227:1, 22–5. Freedman, L. (1981), The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St Martin’s Press). Hashmi, S., and Lee, S. (eds) (2004), Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Khamsi, R. (2007), ‘Were ‘Cursed’ Rams the First Biological Weapons?’, New Scientist at , accessed 9 September 2008. Koblentz, G. (2003), ‘Pathogens as Weapons’, International Security 28:3, 84–122. Lee, S. (1993), Morality, Prudence, and Nuclear Weapons (New York: Cambridge University Press). — (2008), ‘Weapons of Mass D estruction: Are They Morally Special?’ in May (ed.). Martin, S. (2002), ‘The Role of Biological Weapons in International Politics: The Real Military Revolution’, Journal of Strategic Studies 25:1, 63–98. — (2004), ‘Weapons of Mass D estruction: A Brief Overview’, in Hashmi and Lee (eds). May, L. (ed.) (2008) War: Essays in Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Morrison, P., and Tsipis, K. (2003), ‘Rightful Names’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59:3, 77. Mueller, J., and Mueller, K. (1999), ‘Sanctions of Mass D estruction’, Foreign Affairs 78:3, 43–53. Panofsky, W. (1998), D ismantling the Concept of “Weapons of Mass D estruction”’, Arms Control Today 28:3, 3–8. Perkovich, G. (2004), ‘D econflating “WMD ”’, Weapons of Mass D estruction Commission, <www.wmdcommission.org>, accessed 16 January 2007. Quester, G. (1974), ‘Review: Chemical and Biological Warfare’, American Political Science Review 68:3, 1285–91. Roberts, B., and Moodie, M. (2002), ‘Biological Weapons: Toward a Threat Reduction Strategy’, Defense Horizons, Center for Technology and National Security Policy, National D efense University Paper #15. Sagan, S. (2004), ‘Realism, Ethics, and Weapons of Mass D estruction’, in Hashmi and Lee (eds). Steinbruner, J. (1997), ‘Biological Weapons: A Plague Upon All Houses’, Foreign Policy 109, 85–96. Szasz, P. (2004), ‘The International Law Concerning Weapons of Mass D estruction’, in Hashmi and Lee (eds). Tannenwald, N. (2005), ‘Stigmatizing the Bomb: Origins of the Nuclear Taboo’, International Security 29:4, 5–49.

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11 Pacifism and International Relations Iain Atack

Pacifism is conventionally defined in somewhat negative terms, as the refusal to participate in war or preparations for war, most often for moral reasons of one sort or another. Furthermore, pacifism is often depicted in absolutist terms, as the view, for instance, that ‘it is always wrong to go to war’ (Norman 1991, 166) or that ‘participation in and support for war is always impermissible’ (Ceadel 1989, 5). There is also, however, a positive dimension to pacifism that complements this outright opposition to war and the use of armed force. This concerns the pacifist commitment to peacebuilding and to finding alternatives to war and violence as responses to social and political conflict. On this view, pacifism seeks the abolition of war through the use of exclusively non-violent methods to deal with social and political conflict, whether internally within states or internationally between states. In other words, pacifism has a positive objective, replacing armed conflict with peaceful methods of conflict resolution, that complements its strict anti-war position. Thus, there are two components to pacifism as a moral and political position. The first concerns the pacifist refusal to participate in war and political violence more generally. The second concerns the pacifist commitment to replacing war with exclusively non-violent methods of dealing with social and political conflict. Even if all pacifists share this outright opposition to war and a commitment to replacing it with exclusively peaceful methods of conflict resolution, they do not always do so for precisely the same reasons. We can identify conscientious pacifists, for instance, whose reasons for opposing war tend to be strongly ethical or even theological. Such pacifists often derive their opposition to war from a more general or fundamental prohibition against the taking of human life under any circumstances, of which war is simply the most egregious example. Anti-war pacifists, or war resisters, on the other hand, are concerned primarily with the negative and destructive consequences of war as such, which includes but is not limited to the taking of human life on a widespread and sometimes massive scale. While these varieties of pacifism share many features in common, such as

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns their suspicion of the state as a form of organized violence, their analysis of the problem of war and their reasons for refusing to participate in it do not always coincide. An exploration of these different types of pacifism and their limits reveals a dilemma for pacifists, concerning the need to use some form of institutionalized violence or armed force (in the form of policing or law enforcement, peacekeeping or peacemaking, and so on) in order to prevent or eliminate war as a feature of international relations. In other words, there is a tension between the anti-war objectives of pacifism and its commitment to exclusively non-violent methods.

Conscientious Pacifism Both conscientious pacifism and anti-war pacifism involve the refusal to participate in all war, even if their diagnosis of the problem of war and their proposed solutions are not identical. Richard Norman, for example, suggests that the more general moral principle that underlies the pacifist prohibition against participation in war is the wrongness of killing human beings. ‘Pacifism … is a principled position, and the relevant principle to which it appeals is the principle of not taking human life’ (1991, 171). Furthermore, Norman argues that this principle provides a vital distinction between pacifism and just war theory. In other words, pacifism rejects the principle of discrimination, according to which some human beings (such as combatants) become legitimate targets during war and armed conflict, in favour of a much stronger prohibition against the taking of human life under any circumstances. Adin Ballou provides a classic nineteenth-century statement of the conscientious pacifist position, which he characterizes as ‘Christian non-resistance’: ‘The term non-resistance … signifies total abstinence from all resistance of injury with injury’ (1966, 131). He further identifies seven types of behaviour from which a ‘Christian non-resistant’ must abstain. The very first of these prohibitions is this: ‘He cannot kill, maim or otherwise absolutely injure any human being, in personal self-defence, or for the sake of his family, or any thing he holds dear’ (ibid., 137). Furthermore, Ballou makes the connection between ‘the infliction of … absolute personal injury’ and various social evils to which he is opposed, including war, but also slavery and capital punishment (ibid.). Thus, Ballou’s conscientious, Christian pacifism or ‘non-resistance’ is based on his opposition not merely to killing but even to injuring other human beings under any circumstances. This in turn is the source for his opposition not only to war, but also to other social evils. William Lloyd Garrison, a contemporary and compatriot of Ballou, made the connection between Christian non-resistance and opposition to war and the use of armed force quite explicit. He wrote this ‘D eclaration of Principles’ for the New England Non-Resistance Society, of which Adin Ballou was also a member:

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Pac if ism and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns We register our testimony, not only against all wars, whether offensive or defensive, but all preparations of war … against the militia system and a standing army … against all appropriations for the defence of a nation by force and arms, on the part of any legislative body; against every edict of government requiring of its subjects military service. Hence, we deem it unlawful to bear arms, or to hold a military office (1966, 125). Christian non-resistance requires ‘the forgiveness instead of the punishment of enemies … in all cases whatsoever’ because ‘evil can be exterminated from the earth only by goodness’ (ibid., 126). War and the use of military force, whether offensively, defensively or for any purpose whatsoever, violate this central message of the Christian gospel. Therefore, according to Garrison: ‘all who manufacture, sell, or wield those deadly weapons, do thus array themselves against the peaceful dominion of the SON OF GOD [sic] on earth’ (ibid., 127). Garrison’s opposition to war and its instruments is unequivocal, although at least in this statement he does not derive this explicitly from an absolute prohibition against the taking of human life. Nonetheless, its origins in the principle of nonresistance and its reference to forgiveness instead of punishment provide a clear connection to conscientious pacifism with its prohibition against killing or even harming other human beings, no matter what harms they may have committed themselves. Such pacifists also often emphasize the importance of individual conscience and individual action as the locus of resistance to war and political violence. Peter Mayer, in the introduction to his seminal and wide-ranging anthology of pacifist writing, The Pacifist Conscience, identifies ‘absolute pacifism’ as ‘that aspect of peace activity … which relied on a personal testimony against violence – individual acts of conscience’ (1966, 22). According the well-known American pacifist of the twentieth century, A.J. Muste, ‘for the individual to pit himself in Holy D isobedience against the war-making and conscripting state … is now the beginning and the core of any realistic and practical movement against war’ (1966, 351). Leo Tolstoy is perhaps the most influential and uncompromising proponent of this theologically-based conscientious pacifist position. He brings together and crystallizes the central themes of this position in his essays on war and peace. He writes, for example: ‘A Christian, whose doctrine enjoins upon him humility, nonresistance to evil, love to all (even to the most malicious), cannot be a soldier; that is, he cannot join a class of men whose business is to kill their fellow-men’ (1968a, 11). Furthermore, like Muste and many others, Tolstoy emphasizes the importance of individual conscientious objection or ‘the refusals [sic] of individuals to take military service … as the key to the solution of the question’ (1968a, 15). Like Ballou and other Christian pacifists, Tolstoy bases his opposition to war on a particular interpretation of the Christian message as prohibiting not merely killing but all forms of violence. For Tolstoy, pacifism or non-resistance ‘was a personal obligation from which there was no exemption’, which furthermore ‘formed the core of the Gospels’ (Brock 1998, 85). The Sermon on the Mount in particular (as well as the D ecalogue) ‘forbade killing a being created in the image 185

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns of God’, thus reiterating ‘the sanctity of human life’ (ibid., 87). ‘The essential thing, however, is that the law given to us by God … distinctly forbids, not killing only, but also every kind of violence. Therefore we cannot, and will not, take part in your preparations for murder, we will give no money for the purpose’ (Tolstoy 1968b, 20). Tolstoy is concerned with war as a specific social and political problem, but also as representative of much broader theological and ethical issues epitomizing human sin and disobedience to God’s will in the form of violence and the deliberate taking of human life. Another distinguishing characteristic of conscientious pacifism is that it often coincides most closely with an absolute or unqualified pacifist position, involving a complete prohibition against specific (and related) types of behaviour, such as the taking of human life or participation in war. This may be partly due to its emphasis upon the requirements of individual conscience and behaviour, since it may seem easier to both insist upon and to implement such an absolute prohibition at this level than at the level of larger groups or political entities or communities. Furthermore, such conscientious pacifism with its unqualified prohibitions against certain types of behaviour is often based in a deontological rather than a consequentialist approach to establishing ethical principles. In other words, conscientious pacifism is often based upon an assessment of the intrinsic moral quality of certain types of action in themselves (such as killing or the taking of human life), rather than the consequences of these actions. Such a deontological appraisal of action lends itself more easily to establishing clear-cut or unqualified prohibitions against certain categories of action, than does a consequentialist approach. Finally, those who base their pacifism in a deontological rather than a consequentialist approach to ethics do so in the context of a much wider set of philosophical, religious or ideological commitments, from which they derive their explicitly pacifist principles. As Martin Ceadel points out: ‘Most deontologists do not simply assert on their own authority that the use of force, killing, or participation in war is intrinsically wrong. They insist that the latter is the correct inference to be drawn from a particular religious, political, philosophical, or humanitarian doctrine’ (1989, 147). In other words, the pacifist evaluation of a particular type of action (such as killing) as intrinsically wrong, in deontological terms, is derived from a much broader set of beliefs relevant to moral judgements about human behaviour. In the case of Ballou, Garrison and Tolstoy, as we have already seen, the absolute prohibition against killing or the use of violence against human beings that provides the basis of their pacifism is derived from a particular interpretation of the Christian message. Although I have selected examples from the Christian tradition, such pacifism is not unique to Christianity but also finds its counterparts in other religious or faith traditions. Furthermore, such pacifism can also find support within broadly humanist or even cosmopolitan perspectives (see Atack 2005). It must be acknowledged that such conscientious or absolute anti-killing pacifism has more often than not been a minority view, even within these religious or philosophical traditions. As Joseph J. Fahey points out, ‘pacifism was abandoned as the dominant model’ within Christianity quite early in its history, ‘first with the shift to the just war in the fifth century and later in the shift to the total war model in the 186

Pac if ism and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns eleventh century during the Crusades’. Even so, ‘pacifism has always existed as a personal witness throughout Christian history’ (2005, 65). It has also appeared as a characteristic of smaller Christian sects or groups, such as the historic peace churches (Quakers, Mennonites and Brethren), especially in the post-Reformation era.

Anti-War Pacifism The distinguishing characteristic of anti-war pacifism is its focus on war and the use of military force, as distinct from the taking of human life as such, as the central problem or issue for pacifists. There are those, for instance, who oppose modern war in particular, because of the destructiveness associated with the technology of modern warfare. In other words, it is the scale of destruction and even annihilation associated with modern warfare, especially in the form of nuclear weapons, that requires us to adopt an anti-war pacifist position. War may have been conceivable or excusable as an instrument of foreign policy for previous generations, but this is no longer the case. Bertrand Russell was a well-known twentieth-century proponent of such ‘modern war’ pacifism, which he distinguished from a Tolstoyan or absolute pacifist position. He argued for instance that ‘war cannot still be used as an instrument of policy’, even if it could have been justified under certain circumstances in the past, precisely because of the destructiveness of the weapons of modern warfare, including nuclear weapons (1966, 323). Thus, according to Martin Ceadel, ‘Russell was explicit that his pacifism was a contingent objection on consequentialist grounds to modern war’ (1989, 152). This destructiveness also convinced Martin Luther King of the applicability, and even the necessity, of non-violence in international relations as well as domestic politics: During recent months I have come to see more and more the need for the method of nonviolence in international relations … more and more I have come to the conclusion that the potential destructiveness of modern weapons of war totally rules out the possibility of war ever serving again as a negative good. The choice today is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or non-existence (1966, 407–8). Both Russell and King (in this instance) derive their anti-war pacifism from an assessment of the destructive capabilities of the technology of modern war, rather than from a prohibition against the taking of human life as such. Such ‘modern war’ pacifist views reveal another significant difference between the anti-war pacifist position more generally and the conscientious pacifist position, in terms of the types of arguments or principles each position advances in its own support. As discussed earlier, conscientious pacifism tends to be deontological, or derived from moral rules or norms established independently of the consequences of human actions, such as a general prohibition against the taking of human 187

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns life or the use of violence. Anti-war pacifism, on the other hand, tends to be consequentialist, and derives its opposition to war from an assessment of its negative consequences. Thus, Russell’s assessment of the widespread destruction resulting from the technology of modern warfare is an example of such consequentialist moral reasoning. Other consequentialist anti-war arguments include a utilitarian assessment of ‘the enormous cost and wastefulness of modern war’ (Brock and Young 1999, 107). The suggestion here is that the resources expended on war and preparations for war could achieve far more to satisfy the basic needs or promote the well-being of humanity if used in some other way. Similar consequentialist arguments against war concern its use to promote elite interests, through the arms trade or the capture of valuable natural resources, for example, in a way that does little to meet the needs of the mass of humankind and in fact can be directly inimical to meeting those needs. Thus, such anti-war pacifism also tends to take a broader, political view of war, focusing on the social and economic structures giving rise to armed conflict, as distinct from its sources in the moral qualities of individual behaviour. In addition to the moral or theological impetus for conscientious pacifism, came efforts to derive pacifism from a critical social and political analysis. As the Protestant theologian Reinhold Neibuhr pointed out, for example: ‘Gradually the effort to present a Christian testimony against war forced an increasingly large number of F.O.R. [Fellowship of Reconciliation] members to oppose the capitalistic social system as a breeder of war and injustice’ (1966, 250). Pacifists began to complement their commitment to individual conscientious objection to war with a need to understand, and rectify, its social and political causes. Tolstoy, for example, connected war to the existence of armies, and armies to the need for governments to control their citizens: ‘In reality, war is an inevitable result of the existence of armies; and armies are only needed by governments in order to dominate their own working-classes’ (1966, 161). Similarly, Albert Einstein, in his famous exchange of letters with Sigmund Freud prior to World War II, linked war to the economic interests of the ruling class: ‘the governing class in every nation … regard warfare, the manufacture and sale of arms, simply as an occasion to advance their personal interests’ (1966, 237). War is challenged as a vehicle for pursuing elite economic interests. In other words, we must challenge the connection between the economic order and war, in the form of vested corporate or state interests in arms production and the arms trade for example. If we want to eliminate war as a feature of international relations, we need to address such structural inequalities, and not merely modify individual behaviour. One reason for this is an awareness of the limits of pacifism based in individual or small group conscience as a basis for effective war resistance. Conscientious or anti-killing pacifism is often presented in individualistic or sectarian terms. In other words, the choice to refuse participation in all wars under any circumstances is a matter for an individual’s conscience, sometimes justified by their membership in a particular religious (or political) sect or group. It is for this reason that pacifism is often associated with conscientious objection to military service on the part of individuals or members of specific groups. Similarly, Fahey points out that even 188

Pac if ism and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns though ‘pacifism ceased to be the dominant position of Christians on warfare after the fourth century’ (2005, 46), it ‘was still required of monks and clergy after laity were allowed to participate in war’ (ibid., 54). In this way, pacifism becomes a way of life or vocation, binding only on those who choose it, perhaps through membership in a particular group or organization, such as the clergy or the historic peace churches within Christianity. A central problem with such individual or sectarian pacifism is that it can coexist with the continued use of armed force, providing those individuals or groups who so desire are not required or compelled to participate. According to John Rawls, such vocational pacifism ‘no more challenges the state’s authority [to engage in war] than the celibacy of priests challenges the sanctity of marriage’ (1973, 382). In other words, pacifism as a matter for individual choice or conscience can coexist with war as a social and political institution. It becomes an option for some but not an obligation for all; it seems more concerned with the expression of individual or group dissent, than with promoting political and social change to minimize or even eliminate war and armed conflict; it addresses the moral problem of individual participation in war, but not that of the phenomenon of war itself. Conscientious objection to participation in war, expressed in this way, ‘can encourage mere escapism rather than efforts to prevent war’ (Ceadel 1989, 136), or a withdrawal from political life rather than an engagement with the structures that facilitate or require war in order to change them. Thus: ‘Without tackling the roots of war in a faulty economic system, moral protest remained an empty gesture’ (Brock and Young 1999, 113). Neibuhr associated himself with such a socialist or ‘Marxian’ critique of war as a social and economic system. This social and political critique of the war system, with capitalism as its basis, led him away from conscientious pacifism, although he retained his anti-war stance. In other words, he retained his outright opposition to war and the use of armed force in international relations, while recognizing the need for radical social change if the causes of war were to be eliminated: I am forced to associate myself with 20 per cent of the Fellowship who are pacifists only in the sense that they will refuse to participate in an international armed conflict. Perhaps it would clear the issue if we admitted that we were not pacifists at all … We expect no basic economic justice without a destruction of the present disproportion of power and we do not expect the latter without a social struggle (1966, 252–3). Neibuhr recognizes the divergence between his own anti-war stance and a pacifist position based upon the conscientious objection to the use of violence or the taking of human life. He acknowledges the division between such conscientious pacifism and an anti-war position based in a radical social and political critique of the status quo. He accepts that the latter may not be a conventionally pacifist position, even if it aims to achieve social change in order to eliminate the conditions of international armed conflict. Neibuhr’s anti-war position is contingent upon the need to use force to achieve such social and political change. 189

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns The dilemma presented by this tension between an anti-war position based in a radical social and political critique of the status quo and conscientious pacifism may not be as stringent as Neibuhr presents it, however. One can accept the necessity of ‘social struggle’ against those with vested economic and political interests in the war system, for instance, without accepting the necessity of violence or the use of armed force. The campaigns led by Gandhi and other twentieth-century proponents of non-violent political action such as Martin Luther King provide inspiring examples of the possibility of achieving massive social and political change without resorting to violence or armed struggle. But Neibuhr, who was a contemporary of Gandhi, almost wilfully misunderstood satyagraha, or mass nonviolent civil disobedience, as a form of passivity or ‘passive resistance’. Gandhi in particular, however, provides an important link between the moral impetus associated with conscientious pacifism and a moral or theological commitment to non-violence, and the possibilities of mass non-violent political resistance to social and political oppression. As Peter Mayer says: ‘The example of Mohandas K. Gandhi … more than any other enlarged the perspectives of the pacifist tradition in the twentieth century’ (1966, 23).

Anti-War Internationalism Nonetheless, the dilemma for both conscientious and anti-war pacifists is that some form of armed force, or threat of the use of armed force, may be required to achieve the conditions necessary for peace, or the absence of war, in international relations. In other words, the conditions for peaceful international relations can only be achieved through the rule of law, and law always requires some mechanism of enforcement, up to and including the use of coercive physical violence, in order to be effective. Kant’s scheme of ‘Perpetual Peace’ is one such mechanism for eliminating war as a feature of international relations through establishing the rule of law at multiple levels. ‘Thus the state of peace must be established’, Kant writes, and this ‘can only be done in a state of society regulated by law’ (1966, 74). Kant, for instance, opposed standing armies (‘miles perpetuus’) as inimical to international peace, ‘[f]or they are always threatening other states with war by appearing to be in constant readiness to fight’. Nor did he accept a voluntary professional army as an alternative to such standing armies obtained by conscription: ‘To which we must add that the practice of hiring men to kill or to be killed seems to imply a use of them as mere machines and instruments in the hand of another (namely the state) which cannot be reconciled with the right of humanity in our own person’ (ibid., 73). Kant did, however, support the use of military force in response to violent or aggressive incursions against state sovereignty, as a violation of a central principle of international law. Kant’s fifth preliminary article of perpetual peace, for example, prohibits any state from violently interfering ‘with the constitution and administration of another’. Thus, the limited circumstances for the legitimate use of armed force involved the ‘voluntary periodical military exercise on the part of 190

Pac if ism and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns the citizens of the state, who thereby seem to secure themselves and their country against attack from without’ (ibid.). This form of national defence required neither a conscripted standing army nor professional mercenaries, however. Such a position, with its emphasis upon the rule of law at all levels of social and political interaction, including the international, can be called ‘anti-war internationalism’. It shares the pacifist objective of eliminating war as a feature of international relations but not the pacifist insistence upon exclusively non-violent or peaceful methods for dealing with conflict. Although it allows for the limited use of coercive physical violence or even military force, it differs from just war theory, because it does not accept the possibility of a ‘just war’ between states as an inevitable feature of international relations. Even though some just war principles have been incorporated into international humanitarian law, these are somewhat limited from an anti-war internationalist perspective because such laws are aimed at governing the conduct of war rather than its explicit abolition or elimination. The UN Charter, with its general prohibition against the use of armed force by member states, can be seen as a recent embodiment of aspects of such antiwar internationalism. Article 2(4) of the Charter requires that: ‘All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state’. The only exceptions to this general prohibition against the use of armed force in international relations concern ‘individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations’ (Article 51), and actions ‘necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security’ (Article 42). Nonetheless, the UN is not a full realization of the ideals or objectives of anti-war internationalism because it does not foresee or require the end of national standing armies, but rather relies on such armed forces to carry out its tasks of peacekeeping or ‘peace enforcement’ to protect peace agreements or implement international law. The difficulty with such standing armies from an anti-war internationalist perspective, as Kant pointed out almost two centuries previously, is that they can also be used for aggression and armed conflict. The link between the rule of law and enforcement has led some pacifists to a form of anarchism, however, through rejecting government as the embodiment of law backed up by violence. The role of the state presents a problem particularly for conscientious pacifists, who object to the use of violence under any circumstances, and not merely in the context of war. In Western political theory, one of the defining features of the state is that it possesses a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence, both internally and externally. For such pacifists, however, there can never be a legitimate use of violence, and this undermines a central function of the state. As Garrison points out: ‘As every human government is upheld by physical strength, and its laws are enforced virtually at the point of a bayonet. We therefore voluntarily exclude ourselves from every legislative and judicial body, and repudiate all human politics, worldly honors, and stations of authority’ (1966, 125). This anarchist strand, or opposition to the coercive state, runs deep in pacifist thought and practice. A.J. Coates also notes this link between anarchism and conscientious pacifism in particular, stating: ‘Some form of anarchism would 191

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns appear to be the logical conclusion of so universal a form of pacifism, since from this radical perspective the state constitutes a form of institutionalised violence and a source of moral corruption’ (1997, 86–7). Such pacifism objects to a form of political and social organization that depends on the use of violence as its ultimate sanction. Martin Wight similarly equates anarchism as a political theory with pacifism in international relations (1994, 108). Mayer identifies Tolstoy as ‘the great exponent in our time of the Christian anarchist position’ (Mayer 1966b, 160), which is derived in turn from his Christian pacifism. According to Fahey: ‘Tolstoy … renounced institutions that relied on violence: governments, courts, armies, police and private property’ (2005, 54–5). Tolstoy argued, for example, that if the defence of the state and the existing political order requires the use of armed force and the taking of human life, then we need to find alternative forms of social and political organization: And so should every soldier say if the necessity of maintaining the existing order founded on his readiness to murder were put before him. ‘Organize the general order in a way that will not require murder,’ the soldier should say. ‘And then I shall not destroy it. I only do not wish to and cannot be a murderer’ (1968c, 29). According to proponents of conscientious pacifism such as Tolstoy, we require an alternative to the modern conventional state, with its monopoly over the legitimate use of violence both domestically and internationally. For Tolstoy, the state ‘must be dismantled entirely and replaced by a voluntarist society before nonviolence could be fully effective’ (Brock and Young 1999, 6). Our moral obligation to refrain from murder and the taking of human life supersedes any requirement to preserve social and political order through enforcing the law and defending the state. In their comprehensive history of pacifism in the twentieth century, Brock and Young claim that in the UK and the US, ‘The pacifist movement … tended to regard a society which retained a vital local democracy alongside a developed system of communal welfare as the best guarantee for a peaceable world. On the European continent pacifists were often drawn from circles influenced by the libertarian anarcho-syndicalist tradition’ (1999, 113–114). Both approaches shared a suspicion of a strong centralized state and a commitment to cooperation rather than competition as the basis for an economy that served human needs rather than private profit (Atack 2005, 86). One interesting implication of this implicit anarchism is that it suggests domestic social and political revolution is a necessary precursor to the elimination of war and armed conflict and the transformation of international politics. In a sense, domestic social and political change provides the necessary link between pacifism as an individual and personal ethic and the elimination of war as a feature of international relations. Again, according to Brock, Tolstoy made this connection explicit: ‘Tolstoy introduced a new note into the pacifist argument when he pleaded for a radical, if somewhat vague, restructuring of society as an essential prerequisite for establishing international peace and brotherhood’ (Brock 1998, 90). The political organization of society, and patterns of 192

Pac if ism and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns ownership of economic resources and the means of production, must be radically altered for pacifism to become effective and relevant in the international realm as well as a distinctive moral position. This discussion of the political and economic conditions necessary to achieve international peace connects to the opening distinction between the two complementary aspects of pacifism. D uane L. Cady refers to this transition from a ‘negative peace’ to a ‘positive peace’ paradigm as being a second central characteristic of pacifism, in addition to moral opposition to war. In other words, pacifism is not merely concerned with enunciating an anti-war position, it also outlines or suggests a positive vision of forms of social and political organization that would eliminate armed conflict: Peace is not merely the absence of war; that is at best negative peace, a condition necessary but insufficient for a more genuine and complete positive peace. Pacifism goes well beyond moral opposition to war and involves commitment to order arising from within society by the cooperative participation of its members (Phillips and Cady 1996, 45). This vision of a cooperative and peaceful social order is contrasted with a social order achieved ultimately through the threat or use of coercion, force and even violence. Furthermore, this transition to a positive peace paradigm applies both domestically and internationally. There is a crucial difference here between conscientious pacifists, or those who object to the taking of human life under any circumstances for moral or theological reasons, and those who seek to abolish war as a feature of international relations. Conscientious pacifists often extend their position to include a rejection of the state as the epitome of institutionalized violence, while anti-war internationalists view the rule of law, enforced by the state, as a necessary mechanism for eliminating war. As Mayer points out, from this anti-war perspective: ‘Absolute pacifists objected to the principle of international force which ultimately would guarantee the peace’ (1966, 22). On the other hand, from a pacifist perspective, anti-war internationalists limit themselves to a ‘negative peace’ paradigm, because they insist that some form of organized, coercive state violence (in the form of policing or peacekeeping or peacemaking) is necessary to enforce the rule of law, and to replace war and armed conflict as central features of international relations. The achievement of a peaceful international order still depends ultimately on the threat or availability of coercive force, and not on the construction of an alternative social and political order based on cooperation and the satisfaction of fundamental human needs (or ‘positive peace’). It may be possible to arrive at some intermediate approach to eliminating war as a feature of international relations, in accordance with the pacifist ideal, that does not require the revolutionary or utopian anarchism of Tolstoy and others, and yet goes beyond the acceptance of some level of coercive physical force or violence as an inevitable feature of a law-governed international system associated with antiwar internationalism. In other words, there may be forms of active non-violence that can be used to defend more conventional political structures associated with 193

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns the state and the rule of law, for example, such as ‘civilian-based defence’, unarmed peacekeeping or the ‘peace brigades’ (shanti sena) promoted by Gandhi amongst others.

Civilian-Based Defence In his book The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach, Robert Burrowes distinguishes between two types of non-violent defence, ‘civilian-based defence’ and ‘social defence’. He states that: ‘Advocates of civilian-based defense are concerned with defense of the nation-state, its government and territory. According to its leading exponent, Gene Sharp, it is a form of national defense that is designed to deter and defeat foreign military invasions and occupations, as well as domestic coups’ (1996, 154). In other words, ‘proponents of civilian-based defense regard it as a functional equivalent for military defense’ (ibid., 155) aimed at achieving conventional military objectives, such as the defence of a state or government against external aggression or internal enemies, by peaceful or nonviolent methods. Adam Roberts is one of many who have offered more conventional proposals for civilian-based defence in the last half-century or so. He assumes that the primary purpose of ‘civilian defence’ is to protect a state or government and its territory as a replacement for or ‘on its own rather than in combination with military defence’ (1969, 249). Roberts assesses both peacetime preparations and wartime strategy for civilian-based defence, against various forms of external aggression in particular but also against internal threats such as coups d’état. Like many proponents of the pragmatic use of non-violent political action, such as Gene Sharp, Roberts seems to emphasize various forms of non-cooperation on the part of a civilian population with an invading or occupying army or enemy, from instances of ‘micro-resistance’ through ‘legal resistance and polite non-cooperation’ (ibid., 291) to ‘the general strike, and total non-cooperation with the occupier’ (ibid. 283). Roberts concedes, however, that: A ruthless and determined opponent will not tolerate sustained resistance to his orders and the use by the defenders of massive non-cooperation and non-violent intervention. He is likely to attempt to repress the civilian population by force, and readiness to face his repression must be a central feature of a civilian defence policy … The problem of facing repression in all its various forms – murder, imprisonment, brain-washing, torture, and wanton destruction – is one to which there are no simple solutions which do not involve tragedy and suffering (ibid., 289–91). The inevitability of repression and suffering exist, however, no matter what forms of resistance are selected, whether civilian-based and non-violent, or armed and militaristic. In any case, as Roberts points out, ‘non-violent struggles, if they are 194

Pac if ism and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns to be successful, require quite as much overall direction and strategic planning as military struggles’ (ibid., 249). Even as a pragmatic proponent of civilian-based defence, Roberts acknowledges a theme as part of his peacetime preparations points towards a different type of social order. He suggests that ‘the decentralization and diffusion of power, to encourage popular involvement in political and economic affairs and to make it harder for an enemy to seize control of the state machinery, could be promoted’ (ibid., 254). In other words, even from a purely pragmatic point of view, it is much harder for an occupying power to seize control of the mechanisms of social and political organization of a country or a society, and it is much easier for the civilian population to defend them or to maintain control over them, where such power is diffused as widely as possible among the members of that society. This is one of the key insights into the nature of political power more generally that helps to explain the political effectiveness of the various forms of non-violent political action under a wide range of circumstances. Burrowes outlines three criticisms of civilian-based defence, which lead him to an alternative theory or strategy of non-violent defence based instead on social defence. First, civilian-based defence is based explicitly upon a zero-sum rather than a positive-sum view of conflict. In other words, the purpose of civilian-based defence, as with conventional military strategy, is simply to defeat one’s opponent. According to Burrowes, this contradicts a central insight of contemporary conflict resolution techniques, which approach conflict from a positive-sum perspective. Such conflict resolution techniques or methods view conflict as a shared problem between protagonists involving frustrated human needs for recognition, identity and control (for example), for which shared or mutually beneficial (that is, positivesum) solutions must be found through the satisfaction of such needs rather than through achieving victory over one’s enemy (1996, 156–7). Secondly, Burrowes views civilian-based defence as self-contradictory if used to defend conventional, hierarchical political structures such as the nation-state. In other words, the strength and effectiveness of civilian-based defence depends on its ability to mobilize mass popular resistance against either external aggression or internal threats, but such resistance is inimical to the survival of political structures aimed at preserving the privileges and power of an elite. Burrowes’ final criticism of ‘civilian-based defence’ is connected to his second, and concerns its lack of structural analysis. This approach to non-violent defence, for example, fails to identify and seek to change the sources of war and armed conflict in existing political, social and economic structures, involving the unjust or unequal distribution of political power or economic resources. Thus, according to Burrowes, effective non-violent defence must not simply defend the economic and political status quo, but needs to be ‘directed against the militarized state itself’, for example (ibid., 164). ‘If the gains won as a result of successful non-violent defense are to be consolidated, then, among other things, new nonhierarchical structures are necessary’ (ibid., 166). This leads Burrowes to support a form of non-violent defence based on a social defence model rather than civilian-based defence. One of the distinguishing features of this approach to non-violent defence is precisely that it allows and 195

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns facilitates people to mobilize and organize themselves directly against immediate threats to the satisfaction of human needs, through defending their communities or whichever elements of their social fabric or social organization they choose. Furthermore, this approach to non-violent defence can incorporate a commitment to the social changes necessary to achieving forms of social and political organization more likely to result in the satisfaction of fundamental human needs. This ‘strategy of nonviolent defense’, according to Burrowes, ‘is designed to assist activists and ordinary people in their struggle to create social cosmologies that satisfy human needs’ (ibid., 161). In other words, Burrowes’ assessment of the requirements of ‘nonviolent defense’ also leads us towards the radical social vision associated with conscientious pacifists such as Tolstoy, rather than towards the more constrained or limited objectives of anti-war internationalists.

Conclusion This chapter has outlined three different, if overlapping, positions that share a common objective – the elimination of war as a feature of international relations. These positions are: conscientious pacifism, anti-war pacifism and anti-war internationalism. Conscientious pacifism and anti-war pacifism are both pacifist positions in that they object to war and the use of military force, although for different reasons. Conscientious pacifism is based upon deontological objections to killing or the taking of human life under any circumstances, whereas antiwar pacifism is derived from consequentialist considerations associated with the destructiveness of modern or technological warfare in particular. Anti-war internationalism, on the other hand, allows for the limited use of coercive physical violence or even military force in the form of policing or peacekeeping as mechanisms for enforcing the rule of law. International law is seen as an essential alternative to or substitute for war, or the unilateral use of armed force by states in response to political and social conflict. Although they share an acceptance of the limited use of coercive physical violence, anti-war internationalism is more stringent than conventional just war theory because it does not accept the notion of a ‘just war’ between states and (like the two pacifist positions) seeks the abolition or the elimination of war as a feature of international relations. Nonetheless, although the two forms of pacifism and anti-war internationalism share the objective of abolishing war as a feature of international relations, they differ over the methods by which this is to be achieved. The pacifist position insists that the means must coincide or be consistent with the end of eliminating institutionalized violence. The anti-war internationalist, on the other hand, claims that the constrained or limited use of violence may be necessary to eliminate its wider and more unconstrained manifestations, in the form of war and armed conflict. Thus, this chapter has also explored a tension between the two central elements of the pacifist position. These concern its opposition to war as a feature of international relations, and its commitment to exclusively non-violent methods 196

Pac if ism and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns for dealing with conflict. This tension is epitomized by the position of anti-war internationalism, which relies ultimately on the use or availability of armed force in order to eliminate war as an aspect of international relations through enforcing the rule of law. In other words, the pacifist objective of abolishing war can only be achieved through the threat or use of other forms of coercive political violence. One alternative for pacifism is the revolutionary utopian ideal of alternative forms of political and social organization that are based ultimately upon cooperation rather than coercion. Another alternative for pacifism, however, is to promote distinct and effective non-violent mechanisms for dealing with international aggression against states and their citizens, in the same way that Gandhi and others pioneered non-violent forms of resistance to domestic or internal injustice and oppression. Thus, the task for pacifism is to find an equivalent to satyagraha as an effective political response to war and armed conflict. In other words, pacifism and anti-war internationalism can be fully reconciled only to the extent that exclusively peaceful or non-violent methods of international law enforcement can be developed and implemented.

References Almond, B., and Hill, D . (eds) (1991), Applied Philosophy: Morals and Metaphysics in Contemporary Debate (London: Routledge). Atack, I. (2001), ‘From Pacifism to War Resistance’, Peace and Change 26:2, 177–86. — (2005), The Ethics of Peace and War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Ballou, A. (1966), ‘Christian Non-resistance’, in Mayer (ed.). Brock, P. (1998), Varieties of Pacifism: A Survey from Antiquity to the Outset of the Twentieth Century (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press). — and Young, N. (1999), Pacifism in the Twentieth Century (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press). Burrowes, R. (1996), A Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Ceadel, M. (1989), Thinking about Peace and War (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Coates, A.J. (1997), The Ethics of War (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Einstein, A. (1966), ‘Why War?’, in Mayer (ed.). Fahey, J. (2005), War and the Christian Conscience: Where Do You Stand? (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books). Garrison, W.L. (1966), ‘Non-Resistance Society: D eclaration of Principles, 1838’, in Mayer (ed.). Kant, I. (1966), ‘Perpetual Peace’, in Mayer (ed.). King, Jr, M.L. (1966), ‘Pilgrimage to Nonviolence’, in Mayer (ed.). Mayer, P. (1966), ‘Introduction’, in Mayer (ed.). — (ed.) (1966), The Pacifist Conscience (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Muste, A.J. (1966), ‘The Individual Conscience’, in Mayer (ed.). Neibuhr, R. (1966) ‘Why I Leave the FOR’, in Mayer (ed.). 197

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Norman, R. (1991), ‘The Case for Pacifism’, in Almond and Hill (eds). Phillips, R., and Cady, D . (1996), Humanitarian Intervention: Just War vs. Pacifism (Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield). Rawls, J. (1973), A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Roberts, A. (1969), ‘Civilian D efence Strategy’, in Roberts (ed.) (1969). Roberts, A. (ed.) (1969), Civilian Resistance as a National Defence: Non-Violent Action against Aggression (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Russell, B. (1966), ‘Inconsistency?’, in Mayer (ed.). Tolstoy, L. (1966), ‘Letter to a Non-commissioned Officer’, in Mayer (ed.). — (1968a), ‘The Beginning of the End’, in Tolstoy. — (1968b), ‘Two Wars’, in Tolstoy. — (1968c), ‘Notes for Officers’, in Tolstoy. — (1968), Tolstoy on Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence (New York: The New American Library). Wight, M. (1994), International Theory: The Three Traditions (London: Leicester University Press).

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PART III THE ETHICS AND POLITICS H UMAN RIGHTS

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12 Human Rights Universalism Anthony J. Langlois

The rhetoric of human rights is unabashedly universalist: one need go no further than the cornerstone document of the contemporary human rights regime to observe this. The Universal D eclaration of Human Rights, promulgated by the United Nations in 1948, is replete with words and phrases which connote universalism. Human beings are described as members of the human family, all of whom have inherent dignity, equal and inalienable rights, and shared aspirations as a common people for ‘freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want’. The D eclaration was proclaimed, in its own familiar words, as: A common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance. Most of the subsequent 30 articles of the D eclaration use words and phrases which re-emphasize, again and again, the universalist scope of the drafters’ intentions. ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights’ (Article 1). ‘Everyone is entitled to the rights and freedoms set forth in this D eclaration’ (Article 2). ‘Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person’ (Article 3). ‘No one shall be held in slavery’ (Article 4). ‘No one shall be subjected to torture’ (Article 5). ‘Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law’ (Article 6). ‘All are equal before the law … All are entitled to equal protection’ (Article 7). ‘No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest’ (Article 9). And so on – almost every article, then, commences with the words ‘everyone’ or ‘no one’. The exceptions are Article 16 on marriage, which refers to men and women of full age; and Article 30, the final article, which indicates that ‘Nothing in this D eclaration’ can legitimately be used to undermine any of the rights or freedoms set out within its articles. There can be no ambiguity, then, about the universalism which was intended by the drafters of the Universal D eclaration of Human Rights (Morsink 2000). The moral passion behind the D eclaration is stark and powerful. There is little wonder

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns about this: the D eclaration was born out of the turmoil and horror of the Second World War, and in particular of the Jewish Holocaust, a horror of gross proportions which saw men, women and children stripped of their humanity and treated in ways which defy words. The Universal D eclaration of Human Rights stands as a memorial to those who were so treated, and as a reminder of our responsibilities toward one another; it plays a key role by enjoining all people to treat one another equally, with respect and dignity (Ignatieff 2001, 3, 81). While few people dispute the ethical requirement that we should treat one another with respect and dignity, there is in fact considerable disputation over how we conceptualize what it means to act on this respect and dignity (Baxi 2006). The universalism of the ethical ideal can become fraught at the very first step towards giving it particular expression. The Universal D eclaration on Human Rights is not exempt from this conundrum: at any number of different junctures in the development of the D eclaration and in the subsequent politics of human rights, controversy has been present. The D eclaration’s very identity as a bill of rights, its structure, its content, its philosophical provenance, its religious neutrality, its political situatedness, its unintended consequences, its misuse and abuse – in all these and other respect (including its clear achievements and triumphs) the Universal D eclaration betrays its own particularity, partiality and specificity (Kamenka 1978). In what follows I will consider three ways of thinking about the universalism of human rights. In each case the term ‘universalism’ is used differently. I will commence by examining the arguments of a certain set of human rights universalists who celebrate the Universal D eclaration of Human Rights as a document which, in a sense, distills the universalism of all the world’s great ethical traditions. Here the argument is that human rights have been in some sense present in all human history, and that this recognition should help us to embrace them in our time. I am critical of this approach. I think it is neither historically true nor intellectually useful, and argue that in the longer term it undermines whatever short-term legitimacy gains it might generate for human rights. I turn then to a second form of universalism, normative universalism, which is the form for which I argue. This form of universalism focuses on the question of why we think human rights should be universal; it is an argument in political and moral philosophy. This leads us to the third form of universalism: the political and institutional project of giving human rights universal reach, universal application, in a global world. Some speak as if this is already the case: claims are made that human rights have world wide acceptance, that they are the international ethical constitution of a global world. In practice this is far from the case. Neither the international system of states nor the increasingly powerful variety of non-state agents operative globally are in practice universally held accountable by the existing human rights system. I indicate some of the challenges that must be met before the human rights system can fulfil that role.

202

Human Righ t s Univer sal ism

Historical/Cultural Universalism Proponents of human rights have often defended the universality of human rights by an appeal to history and culture. They argue that if we examine the ethical traditions of history and the present, we do not have to go far before we find evidence of human rights. There is no denying the fact that human rights have been ignored or abused by rulers and thugs throughout human history; but that is not the point. Rather, the ethical traditions witnessed throughout the ages and those present today have always had codes and principles of behaviour which, so it is argued, can be readily translated into human rights terms. There are a plethora of books which examine the ethical doctrines of the mainstream religions and other cultural traditions and interpret them in ways which support human rights (for example Bloom et al. 1996). Such claims are used as evidence in the case for the universality of human rights. Such a strategy, however, makes a number of conflations, with the consequence that the case for human rights becomes tarnished or discredited. The principle conflation is the identification of modern human rights with ethical positions or normative constructions of various kinds, drawn from differing cultures and traditions, which express values which are consonant with or similar to human rights. The problem is the claim that there exists here a relation of identity; for example, the claim that ideas of political representation which appear in certain Confucian texts or among the debates of certain Church Fathers have a relation of identity with our modern civil and political rights. I suggest that this is a mistaken claim. It may well be correct to argue that certain consonant values are shared; but this is quite different from asserting that human rights can be found in these ancient texts (Langlois 2001, Chapter 2). To unpack this a little more, we need to say something about the nature of human rights themselves. The doctrine of human rights has been an important political doctrine in human history during two periods. The first was their original debut in the 1700s and 1800s, when they were known as ‘the rights of man’, and found political expression in documents such as the French D eclaration on the Rights of Man and of Citizens, and in the US D eclaration of Independence. The second period is the one in which we live – the post-World War II period, often termed the period of the rights revolution (Henkin 1990). What is significant about these two periods is that they saw the development of a politicolegal instrument of a very specific form and nature – the right (and its associated philosophical tradition) – which could be used to constrain the power of government against the right-holder. It is this which is revolutionary and new about the rights of man, and in our period, about human rights. And it is this – the very specific instrument and the tradition which supports it – which cannot be found in all cultures, religions and societies in the past or indeed in the present (D onnelly 2007, 284–5). There is no doubting that many of these societies had legal or social mechanisms of one form or another which might be seen as antecedents to human rights, or which might share consonant values with human rights; but a fully realized doctrine of human rights, or the rights of man, was not to be found anywhere in human history until the period of the European Enlightenment (Kamenka 1978). 203

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns So, what is it that people talk about when they say that human rights can be found throughout history and across all human societies (to the extent that this is their claim)? The answer here is clear. Many of the values and norms which find their contemporary expression as the content of human rights may also be found in the histories of various human societies. If we take certain examples – the idea of human dignity, or equality, the idea that torture is wrong, or that political representation is a good thing – these ideas are represented throughout human history in various traditions, in some form of development or another (D onnelly 2007). But it is a mistake to view these consonant values (to the extent that they are) as actual cases of human rights being present in the past. This is particularly the case when we look more closely at the philosophical ideas which are bound up with the notion of human rights. The rights of man, and later human rights, emerge out of a substantive political philosophy – that of Enlightenment liberalism – which has very specific commitments to ideas such as individualism, democracy, universalism, autonomy, freedom, liberty and so on (Langlois 2001, Chapter 3; Herbert 2002). While it is true that many religious or cultural traditions put forward values such as equality or freedom or political representation, they do not necessarily do so in a broader philosophical context which is congruent with the liberal ideas and ideals of the human rights tradition. For example, many religious traditions claim to speak of the equality that holds between men and women. This has been used to suggest that these traditions have a secured human rights credibility: they believe in the equality of the sexes, and that belief has God’s imprimatur. However, quite often what is meant by equality in the religious context is very different from what is meant by the equality that animated the early and latter-day proponents of human rights. Metaphysical equality before God means nothing for a human rights proponent, unless it translates into liberal forms of social, political and personal equality – equality in personal freedom, equality of opportunity, equal autonomy, and so on. A religious or metaphysical equality which allows religious (or other cultural) leaders to constrain or limit what women can or cannot do with their bodies, their time, their children, their intellects and so on, is emphatically not the kind of equality which can be harnessed to the promotion of human rights (Nussbaum 2002). Human rights proponents need to be aware that unless ideas such as justice, fairness and equality are operating in a philosophical context which is amenable to the substantive values of the human rights tradition, they are of little help to that tradition. They certainly do not represent historical evidence for the universality of human rights. Part of the problem here, part of the reason why people appear compelled to argue that human rights can be found in all cultural traditions, is the supposition that for human rights to be legitimate today, they need to be historically rooted in all cultures. This is a mistaken view and it leads on to the mistaken task of looking for evidence of human rights in the world’s cultures and traditions (D onnelly 2007). The impetus to do this exists on various levels. Politically, it makes human rights an easier sell. If you can demonstrate to Muslims that the Koran has antecedents to human rights in it, then there is a chance (so it may be thought) that it will be easier to persuade Muslims to embrace the ideals and institutions of human rights 204

Human Righ t s Univer sal ism (assuming they have not already done so). Or similarly, those wishing to promote human rights often have an admirably well-developed desire to be sensitive to the various cultural and religious backgrounds of the people among whom they work. It is thus thought that attempts to massage these various traditions into the human rights story is part of being culturally respectful and tolerant. Once again, this is a mistaken approach. When we examine the cultures, traditions and philosophies of the world, we do not find that they all converge on the modern twentieth-century idea of human rights. Attempts to read human rights back into these cultures may be thought to help with the goal of political legitimation, or may be inspired by genuine motives of cultural sensitivity, tolerance or pluralism. But they do not represent an accurate portrayal of either the history of these traditions, or of the development of the human rights movement (Langlois 2001; Hood 2001; D onnelly 2007; Goodhart 2008). This frank admission may raise a concern for some about cultural relativism: does not this concession, it might be argued, give added ground to the argument of those who say ‘we come from a different background, a different tradition, one which doesn’t have human rights, one which doesn’t need human rights; therefore, please leave us alone and go away’ (see Langlois 2001, Chapter 1)? This would be a significantly unfortunate concession, given that many of the people who argue this way are political elites who foster cultures of human rights abuse. This is well illustrated by the so called ‘Asian Values D ebate’ (see Langlois 2001; Jacobson and Bruun 2000). The mistake here is to suppose that the legitimacy or relevancy of human rights (or any other ethical or political doctrine) is derived from that doctrine having always been present in a people’s culture or tradition. Upon reflection such a criterion for legitimacy or relevancy soon shows itself to be inadequate. This would presuppose a highly static view of the nature of cultures or traditions, and a similarly delimited view of the nature of the people or group that held to those cultures or traditions (Lawson 2006). However, there is little or no correspondence between such idealizations and what we know of human history. Cultures and traditions, no less than peoples and groups, are most appropriately described as fluid or porous. Indeed, the very idea of a tradition is of something that evolves and changes over time; many of these incremental differentiations are caused or influenced by ideas and people from other places and other times. The legitimacy of new ideas depends on their being seen as good ideas, useful, helpful, relevant, and beneficial. These judgements in turn are made for a host of reasons, only some of which might have reference to the way in which these new ideas have synergies with older ideas, or are consonant with the pillars of the tradition. The position that I take here is one which readily admits cultural relativity – not cultural relativism (cf. Freeman 2002, Chapter 6). Cultural relativity acknowledges cultural difference: people – individuals and groups – are different from one another. Their traditions differ, their religions differ, their cultural forms differ, and so on. This is true at the superficial level – some religions ban the drinking of alcohol, some do not. But it is also true at the level of deep structures and norms; it is true to the extent that it is very hard to reconcile the norms and structures of some cultures and 205

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns traditions with those which are espoused by human rights protagonists. In certain cases, no amount of massaging, of looking for antecedent intellectual developments, or historically practised norms, no amount of reinterpretation, will transform cultural ideals and behavioural tropes such that they could be described as human rightsrespecting. This is not to say that that such a culture itself, or the people who live within it, could not change so as to become supporters of human rights. Cultural relativity admits the existence of such cultures and of others the norms of which may not be so far removed from the norms of the human rights tradition. This relativity is not in any way a concession to relativism, however. Relativism is the view that all these different cultural positions have equal standing and value – simply because they exist (for a good discussion see Levy 2002). As a consequence, there are no grounds for judging between them; one cannot be said to be better or worse than another. The relativist position is self-defeating. It is itself a substantive position which, while holding itself to have the final say, the truth, about the value of different positions, says simultaneously that there are no grounds to think that any one substantive position can be the final say or the truth about the value of different traditions. The relativist is hoist by their own petard. They can certainly not use their relativism in any consistent political manner, for all it allows them to do is to note that people have different views. Relativism leads to quietism and political irrelevance. Cultural relativity, by contrast, does not lead to political quietism and irrelevance. Rather, it acknowledges the differences between human persons and groups, and asks questions about what those differences might mean. Are they good or bad, desirable or not? And it asks questions about the means we use to discriminate between these differences. Relativity, when handled well, suggests that we can acknowledge that culture X or religion Y bears little relation to the human rights tradition. We can do this without damning the tradition or culture outright, but also without the unhelpful suggestion that because there has been no past link with human rights, that either there should be no future link, or that any link would necessarily be politically illegitimate or morally bankrupt. What is important is not that human rights can be found in all past human traditions (they cannot), nor the fear that because they cannot be found they are not applicable to all people (a claim which leads to some form of cultural relativism). Rather, human rights are universal because it is thought that they should apply to all people (Langlois 2007). The universalism of human rights properly emerges out of a moral argument, not out of an empirical or historical survey. It is the normative force of the idea of moral universalism which gives human rights their bite, their traction, in our political sensibility, not an appeal to the degree to which these ideas have been practised in the past or in the present. The practice of these ideas is itself only a good thing if the moral argument for their desirability has first been won. It is the moral argument which furnishes us with the justification for the universal application of human rights. The search for evidence of human rights antecedents or consonant values may well be a useful adjunct, politically instrumental in the task of legitimation, education, familiarization. But it is in forging the moral argument for human rights that the key work is done in the fight for universal human rights. 206

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Normative Universalism The normative universalism of the doctrine of human rights arises not because human rights can be observed to be respected everywhere (an empirical universalism), nor because they can be found in the traditions of all cultures (a historical universalism). Rather, human rights are universal because as a matter of moral philosophical principle we believe that these norms for human behaviour should be universally respected. The proper universalism of human rights is a normative or moral-philosophical universalism. To the extent that empirical universalism has any real power, it is because the widespread observation of or adherence to human rights standards is preceded by the normative judgment that such behaviour is a good thing. Similarly, the search for historical or cultural antecedents to modern human rights depends on the prior acceptance of the normative universalism of these rights. The argument that I present here is rather difficult and in some quarters politically unfashionable. In brief, it is that the human rights doctrine is a form of political liberalism, and that it is out of the premises of this liberalism that the normative universalism of human rights emerges (see Kamenka 1978). It is politically unfashionable and difficult because liberalism emerges historically out of the West and is often identified with the West – indeed liberalism is often misidentified with the illiberal behaviour of Western governments, corporate elites, religious institutions and so on. Human rights do not make sense apart from liberalism, and within the West human rights emerge precisely as protections against the abuses of institutional power, because liberal normative assumptions about human persons led to the conclusion that such behaviour and abuse should not be tolerated. For the human rights movement to continue to be effective in global politics it must be prepared to stand for these values from its own tradition; I argue that part of that stand is to rearticulate and defend the fundamental values of liberalism, and to show how it is that they are necessary for the moral justification of human rights (Langlois 2007). I commenced this chapter by looking at the way in which the language of the Universal D eclaration of Human Rights emphasizes and expresses the universalism of human rights. It is worth revisiting the D eclaration for a moment to see the way in which it also privileges the values and norms of liberalism. A quick perusal is sufficient for the reader to recognize all the main elements of liberal political theory: the emphasis on freedom and liberty, dignity and equality; the importance of the rule of law, freedom from slavery and torture, the presumption of innocence; the ownership of private property, freedom of religion and expression, the right to take part in the government of one’s country; and more controversially, rights to adequate standards of living, education and cultural participation. This document is in essence the manifesto of a liberal political philosophy. Imagine if you will that the drafters of the Universal D eclaration had called their document ‘The Liberal Manifesto of Rights’. It is difficult to imagine, then, and certainly not now, that such a title could get international approval: as noted above, liberalism is seen in many quarters to be too exclusive or insufficiently pluralistic 207

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns to be the basis for a world global ethics (but see Crowder 2002). Nonetheless, it was the case that the Universal D eclaration of Human Rights, which has become the central normative touchstone for international politics, articulated a liberal political agenda for all people. Much of the subsequent controversy associated with arguments about universalism and relativism has been complicated by the failure of human rights proponents either to be clear about or to properly understand the liberal nature of the political project in which they are involved. In the same way that believers in natural law and rights (the antecedents to modern human rights) often claimed that these ideas were self-evident (Hunt 2007), so too, for many believers in human rights, the liberal values which they articulate are held to be universal, values of the common human sense. But, in fact, they are not common or universally held, despite the desire of many that they be so. And it is this which makes the philosophical justification of human rights so important: the proponents of human rights need to have good reasons with which to defend human rights, and by which to attempt to persuade others to support human rights (Mahoney 2007). I do not have the scope here to mount a full defence of liberalism. Let me instead sketch the basic commitments and articulate the universalism that flows from these – with the caveat that liberalism is a broad church and here I paint with correspondingly broad brushstrokes. Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher of the European Enlightenment, gave us a phrase which encapsulates the principle commitment of all liberals: that the individual should always be treated as an ends and not as a means (Kant 2002; Anderson-Gold 2001). It is the high status of the human person, the individual, which is the touchstone of liberalism. All individuals are considered to be equal in moral worth and standing (Gray 1986; Kelly 2005). This universalism is at the core of all liberalisms, and is central to the human rights tradition. The right treatment of the individual is the core liberal commitment. This individualism is understood and interpreted in different ways by different liberals. For some it is deontological: the individual simply has his or her dignity by virtue of being human. For others, this dignity is linked to the idea of the human as a rational being, or as an autonomous agent, as a being who has certain recognizable basic needs or who has certain capabilities (Fields 2003). Much of the dispute about the legitimacy of liberalism’s universalism is generated by critiques of these philosophical starting points for considering what it means to be human. Communitarians of various types do not like the way in which liberalism privileges the individual above the group, or the way in which individual reason or autonomy are used as the foundation for an unfolding political philosophy (Mulhall and Swift 1996). These bases are argued to be too narrow, insufficiently pluralistic. They exclude philosophies, traditions and theories about our ways of being as human which privilege other views. Therefore they are of limited use as the foundation for a global ethic. The response to this criticism, by the robust liberal, goes something like this. Yes, it is true that liberalism’s commitment to a certain set of premises about what it means to be human are not shared by everyone. They are not universal in that 208

Human Righ t s Univer sal ism sense – they are not views to which everyone is going to subscribe. Nonetheless, liberalism does give rise to a political and social context where the largest number of people are given the greatest freedom to believe what they like and to behave how they like, providing they do not harm others and are consistent with granting this freedom to all others. In this way, liberalism is seen to be the most effectively pluralistic and capacious foundation for political society (Crowder 2002). The ‘narrowness’ of liberalism is, from this point of view, the most generous option when contrasted with all other available alternatives. It is that vision – of a basic foundation of liberal freedoms, upon which people might build what they like – which is articulated in the rights which are found in the Universal D eclaration of Human Rights. The normative universalism of human rights is a philosophical commitment to justifying, protecting and advancing this vision into the world as we live in it. That commitment leads us directly to the final sense of universalism which I wish to consider here, which I have described as a political and institutional universalism. This is the grand political project of building a global culture of human rights observance.

Universalism as a Political and Institutional Project Reading the rhetoric of some human rights proponents, you could be mistaken for thinking that human rights had already reached the point of political and institutional universalism (Charvet 1998; Langlois 2002). Commentators talk about human rights having worldwide acceptance and being a universal human rights regime. Indeed, the UN, a global political structure, is the heart of the human rights movement, being the source of the Universal D eclaration and a range of subsequent instruments, treaties and declarations about human rights (Oberleitner 2007). The history and impact of the UN human rights regime is well documented, and I do not intend to gloss it, and the success it represents, here (Morsink 2000). Rather, what I wish to focus on are the difficulties and problems associated with the political and institutional project of universalizing observance of and accountability to human rights standards. A global framework, such as that which we have in the UN’s human rights regime, is only the beginning. So, here, I set out a number of outstanding challenges, in two groups, which must be negotiated as part of the task of building a political and institutional human rights universalism. The first group of challenges has to do with international human rights law and the international system of states – or, more fundamentally, sovereignty. Many issues could be raised under this rubric. I focus on three: universal legality, regional cooperation and state adoption of human rights standards. Glib references to the ‘worldwide acceptance’ of international human rights law belie the reality that this body of law is an interconnected patchwork of legal instrumentalities and institutions, each with their own (often competing) jurisdictions and interests. The body of international human rights law that is often 209

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns referred to in glowing or optimistic terms by human rights proponents is not in fact one body of law. Rather, it is comprised of legal instrumentalities which reference different treaties, institutions, courts (and their judgments), agreements, legal traditions, competing norms, and the overarching framework of the UN human rights system - itself not a parsimonious or internally coherent system (Oberleitner 2007, Chapter 4). When advances are made in international human rights law – for example a judgment is made by a court, a treaty is signed by a collection of states – there is no sense in which such an advance is automatically universal. Universality, in this context, is a goal which is worked towards on a piecemeal basis (Scott 2004). Even if we assume the best possible circumstance for a notional specific advance in international human rights law, the universalization of this notional advance is something which, by virtue of the nature of the international state system, only proceeds on a jurisdiction by jurisdiction basis. Individual legal jurisdictions sign on to such advances, or are parties to such advances as a consequence of other commitments to which they have previously agreed. Needless to say, this piecemeal manner of working (which may indeed extent to the sub-state level) gives rise to any number of differences between jurisdictions regarding the institutionalization and enforcement of our notional human rights advance. Here again there are significant implications for the idea of universality: while ‘the spirit’ of the notional human rights advance may be applauded across jurisdictions, radically different local contexts may lead to widely divergent, perhaps even contradictory outcomes in practice, in local jurisdictions (Baxi 2006). Regional cooperation, the second of my challenges in this group, may be one way of ameliorating the worst elements of the problems I have sketched above. There are a number of regions which have cooperative human rights systems: the European Union, the Inter-American System and the African Regional Human Rights System are the key examples here (Scott 2004). At their best, these systems provide a framework for shared norms, and for shared monitoring, regulatory and implementation standards. The great advantage of such systems is that they provide a forum that is of manageable scope and that is more likely to house shared interests, processes and relationships by virtue of already existing regional ties. They are no panacea, however. Some regions do not have such human rights systems – the Asian region is the most conspicuous example here, and remains a region where the likelihood of such a system developing is minimal in the medium term. And in some places where regional cooperation systems do exist – such as in Africa – the alleviation of human rights abuse faces so many obstacles that another layer of institutional structure is often seen as mere window dressing (for a discussion of human rights in Africa, see Mutua 2002). This leads us to the third and most fundamental challenge: the behaviour of states and their elites. The problems here are manifold and well known. For international human rights law to take effect it must be adopted by and translated into the local jurisdiction. In most cases this requires individual states to rework their own domestic legal systems so that the normative standards, and sometimes the regulatory, institutional and organizational mechanisms of international 210

Human Righ t s Univer sal ism human rights law, can find effective application domestically. Again, in the best of circumstances this is a complex if manageable challenge; but many states and some whole regions do not find themselves in such circumstances (Freeman 2002). We need to add to these challenges – which deal with the state and the international system – a second cluster of challenges. These challenges are closely related to increased levels of globalization – particularly the globalization of economic activity and non-state organizations. Three classes of organization are of particular interest here: non-governmental organizations (NGOs), transnational corporations (TNCs) and religious organizations (such as the Catholic Church), along with other organized cultural movements. NGOs are a particularly interesting case. Many NGOs have been crucial players in the advocacy and spread of human rights (Freeman 2002). The growth and proliferation of NGOs in recent decades appears at first glance to run hand in hand with a global cosmopolitan awareness of the suffering and plight of distant others, and the need to do something about it (Pogge 2002). However, NGOs are not restricted to human rights advocacy organizations. And these organizations have themselves come under fire for not always being consistent with the norms and standards of the human rights movement (for an interesting account see Guilhot 2005; also Baxi 2006). By far the most commonly heard criticism of NGOs has to do with their lack of accountability and their collective democratic deficit. For many critics, there is a significant tension between the goals of NGOs (particularly those who have an explicit concern with human rights and democratization) and the means (including organizational structures) by which those goals are pursued. With respect to TNCs, many human rights proponents would argue that there is no similar tension: TNCs are severely reprimanded for having little or no commitment to human rights either in word or in deed. The interests of shareholders and the size of the company profit are all that is said to matter. This sharp critique has brought a response within the corporate world, with the talk of a triple bottom line (profits, along with social and environmental impact) and the development of a corporate responsibility movement. The behaviour of corporate interests the world over – and the increased capacity to publicize this behaviour – has generated a popular and scholarly interest in how we might broaden the scope of human rights from their traditional concern with the behaviour of sovereign states, to a broader concern with the human rights abusive behaviour of any agent – be it a state representative, an NGO worker or the employees and management of a company. Of particular note here is the relationship between the new power of TNCs in a global world, and the traditional discourses of international relations about the power of the state and its capacities to control and regulate capital. Effective proposals in this arena must critically engage both sides of this equation (Pogge 2002; Goodhart 2005). This scrutiny would extend also to a third class of actor, namely the representatives of religious organizations. Traditional international relations scholarship has neglected the role of religious organizations in international affairs. The focus on state actors and their agency has led to a dearth of scholarship regarding the influence and role of religion. While many religions have institutional forms which 211

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns enable them to direct agency into international affairs in ways easily recognizable by traditional international relations approaches (the Catholic Church with its leader, the Pope, being the consummate example), many religions do not have such easily assimilable institutional forms (see discussion in D alacoura 2007). This makes the key role they do play in global politics, the influence they have over the advance of human rights, all the more critical. Taken together, these challenges to human rights universality show up the complexity of the situation. In a survey such as this one, it is not possible to plumb the depths of these issues (four excellent books that do so are Baxi 2006; Griffen 2008; Guilhot 2005; and Oberleitner 2007). But my intention here has been to illustrate two points. First, any discussion of the political or institutional universalization of human rights, while legitimately proceeding with some optimism, must nonetheless face the great obstacles which exist to the realization of its goals. Second, it must be realized that the project of universalizing the norms and ideals expressed within the doctrine of human rights is a deeply political project. Not all people identify with the normative goals of human rights universalization, and the attempt to implement those normative goals through institutional reform will generate opposition. This is as much the case when one looks at the challenges generated by implementing human rights at the international state system level, via regional cooperation, or within specific states, as it is when one goes beyond state structures to look at the behaviour of NGOs, TNCs and religious and other actors.

Conclusion The Universal D eclaration of Human Rights speaks of human rights as ‘a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations …’. In this chapter we have considered some of the issues that surround the idea of there being such a common, universal standard. I have argued that the discourse of human rights emerges out of the political philosophy of liberalism and that its universalism stems from the normative assumptions within liberalism about the nature of the human person. I have also argued that for human rights to maintain its veracity as a cosmopolitan political project, it needs to adhere to these normative liberal values, pre-eminent among them the protection and well-being of the individual person. As with all political projects, the human rights project is and will continue to be controversial. In our world there are many points of view about what it means to be a human person, and not all of them are consonant with the values which are expressed in the international human rights regime. It is partly because of this that those who are involved in the promotion of human rights need to be clear about the normative commitments that are entailed by human rights, and need to have good reasons which they can present in defence of those commitments. These reasons will not satisfy everyone – and, indeed, reasoning is not all that is required: there is a desperate need for those who have declared their support for human rights to lead by example. 212

Human Righ t s Univer sal ism Article 2 of the Universal D eclaration says, ‘Everyone is entitled to the rights and freedoms set forth in this D eclaration’. The persuasiveness of the claim that human rights are universal ultimately rests on the persuasiveness of the reasons which we can give when asked the question: why is it that everyone has those rights? My contention has been that the liberal tradition which first inspired the language of modern human rights continues to provide us with the resources with which to answer to this question.

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Ignatieff, M. (2001), Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Jacobson, M., and Brun, O. (eds) (2000), Human Rights and Asian Values: Contesting National Identities and Cultural Representation in Asia (Surrey: Curzon). Kamenka, E. (1978), ‘The Anatomy of an Idea’, in Kamenka, E., and Tay, A. (eds), Human Rights (Port Melbourne: Edward Arnold). Kant, E. (2002), Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Kelly, P. (2005), Liberalism (Cambridge: Polity Press). Langlois, A.J. (2001), The Politics of Justice and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). — (2002), ‘Human Rights: The Globalization and Fragmentation of Moral D iscourse’, Review of International Studies 28:3, 479–96. — (2004), ‘The Elusive Ontology of Human Rights’, Global Society 18:3, 243–61. — (2007), ‘Human Rights and Cosmopolitan Liberalism’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 10:1, 29–45. Lauren, P.G. (1998), The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press). Lawson, S. (2006), Culture and Context in World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Levy, N. (2002), Moral Relativism: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld). Mahoney, J. (2007), The Challenge of Human Rights (Oxford: Blackwell). Morsink, J. (2000), The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press). Mulhall, S., and Swift, A. (1996), Liberals and Communitarians, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell). Mutua, M. (2002), Human Rights: A Political and Cultural Critique (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press). Nussbaum, M. (2002), Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Oberleitner, G. (2007), Global Human Rights Institutions (Cambridge: Polity Press). Pogge, T. (2002), World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press). Scott, S.V. (2004), International Law in World Politics: An Introduction (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner).

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13 Genocide: Ethical and Normative Perspectives Adam Jones

At first glance, the title of this chapter must seem an oxymoron. Few sociopolitical phenomena appear as cut and dried, from an ethical standpoint, as genocide – defined as the destruction of human groups, particularly (under international law) national, ethnic, racial and religious ones. Genocide has been called ‘the crime of crimes’: the ne plus ultra of collective violence. Surely, if ethical considerations are to hold any sway in international affairs, they impose a blanket ban on acts of genocide, and a positive obligation to prevent it or, failing that, to suppress it with all due dispatch and punish its perpetrators to the full limits of the law. In fact, as I hope to show, in launching this inquiry we enter into rich, complex and often ambiguous ethical terrain. Consider the following ethical and normative questions: • What constitutes ‘intent’ to commit genocide; how is it ascertained; and how does it shape our perceptions of the ethical transgressions of genocide’s perpetrators? • Is genocide ever justified? • Is genocide denial ever justified? If and when it is not, what measures are valid in confronting it? • Under what circumstances is intervention in genocide ethically warranted? How are such interventions to be managed, and can one ensure that the cure is not worse than the disease? • Which punishments are appropriate for génocidaires (genocidal perpetrators), and what are the legitimate boundaries of the perpetrator set? Should guilt be ascribed collectively to classes of actors, even to entire populations; or must it always and only be assigned individually? These are some of the issues I hope to engage with here – raising more questions than I can answer, and seeking to promote constructive discussion and debate among readers of this volume. I begin by sketching the outlines of genocide: its historical origins as phenomenon and analytical concept; its evolution in both international

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns law and public discourse. I then consider the crucial issue of genocidal intent; the motives and claimed ethical justifications of génocidaires; the ethically appropriate stance toward genocide denial; and the challenges of humanitarian intervention and post-genocide justice. In the conclusion, I ask whether a world free of genocide is conceivable, and what ethical foundations such a ‘new order’ might require.

Origin In his field defining work of comparative genocide studies, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century, Leo Kuper wrote that while the word ‘genocide’ is ‘new, the concept [itself] is ancient’ (1981, 9). A surprising number of genocide scholars would in fact quibble with Kuper’s contention. One line of argument contends that whatever mass violence may have befallen populations in the pre-modern period, genocide as such is inherently ‘modern’ – not a contemporary phenomenon, but one intimately linked to the rise of modernity and its attendant processes of nationstate formation, global imperialism and technological invention that define it. In part, this view reflects the centrality of one genocide above all others, in popular perceptions and in the evolution of the field of study. This is the Nazi Holocaust against diverse ethnic and national populations during the Second World War, but especially against the Jews of Europe. The Nazi vision of a racially pure empire in which ‘Aryans’ (Germans and select northern Europeans) held sway led inexorably to campaigns of mass violence against Untermenschen – designated ‘subhumans’, such as Jews, Slavs and Roma/Sinti (Gypsies). Some of these peoples were to be consigned to helot status, serving the German overlords; but the vast number, and Jews in particular, were to be systematically exterminated. The panoply of measures geared to this destruction was quite broad, including death through starvation, privation and overwork. But ‘The Holocaust’ is linked most of all in our minds with what Wolfgang Sofsky called ‘the death factory’ (1997) – the extermination camps established on occupied Polish soil from 1942 onward, in which millions of Jews and substantial numbers of Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war and others were concentrated and murdered. Though an enormous number of Jews and Slavs were in fact slaughtered by rifle fire (the so-called ‘Holocaust of bullets’ on the eastern front in 1941–42), it is the comparatively high-tech institution of the gas chamber that is most closely associated with the Holocaust. When this is combined with the nationalist-racist ideology that underpinned the Nazi enterprise; the complex bureaucracy that marked off victims for exploitation and extinction; the transportation network that gathered them for extermination; and the psychological distancing of death administered by Zyklon B cyanide gas, we see something of the case for a link between genocide and modernity. As the study of the Holocaust has spun off into the comparative field of genocide studies, however, we have been made aware – almost on a monthly basis, it seems – of the numerous precedents for Nazi savagery. Certainly, such historical precedents were uppermost in the mind of a Polish Jew, Raphael Lemkin 216

Geno c ide: Et h ic al and No r mat ive Per spec t ives (1900–59), who in childhood and early adulthood was exposed to tales of Christian suffering at Roman hands, colonial depravities in the Americas and Australasia, and (during World War I) the Ottoman Empire’s destruction of Armenians and other Christian minorities. Lemkin ended up pursuing a career in law. He was struck by the fact – by the ethical ‘inconsistency’, as he saw it – that while the murder of individuals was the highest crime in most domestic legal systems, no formal international sanction prohibited a state from murdering its own citizens en masse. Rulers and their henchmen were protected by the norms of sovereignty and non-intervention established by the Westphalian state system that had ruled the roost since the mid-seventeenth century. Lemkin experimented with terms like ‘barbarity’ and ‘vandalism’ to evoke the destruction – not just physical but cultural and civilizational – of minority groups worldwide, and to generate international legal concern for their plight. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Lemkin was forced to flee, eventually finding refuge and employment at D uke University in North Carolina. There, in 1943, he settled upon perhaps the most potent neologism ever devised: genocide, from the Greek genos (race or tribe) and the Latin suffix -cide, killing. He developed and published the term in his 1944 work, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Had he left it there, in a book that sold only a few hundred copies in its author’s lifetime, he and ‘genocide’ would likely have been consigned to obscurity. Instead, over the next several years, Lemkin undertook a campaign of ethically inspired ‘norm entrepreneurship’ with few parallels in history. He relentlessly lobbied the nascent United Nations until its delegates succumbed and, in 1948, propounded the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Finally, Lemkin had his law: one recognizing (in contravention of today’s proponents of genocide-as-modernity) that ‘at all times in history’ the world had been plagued by genocide, and banning acts committed ‘with intent to destroy’ human collectivities ‘in whole or in part’ – though, as noted, the Convention’s ambit was limited to ‘national, ethnical [sic], racial, and religious’ groups. This brings us to a first ethical consideration of significance: why should the analytical and legal concept of ‘genocide’ be limited in this manner? When Lemkin was constructing his earliest formulations, it was not unreasonable for national and ethnic minorities to be uppermost in his mind. Their plight had animated some of the earliest expressions of international concern and calls for humanitarian intervention, in particular by Western Christian nations protesting the repression of their co-religionists in the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere. (They were much less bothered, it should be noted, by their own slaughter and suppression of ‘native’ populations in the empires they themselves ruled.) The framers of the UN Convention shared this preoccupation, but spirited debate nonetheless took place over whether, for example, political groups and social classes should be included. Today, we are both more sceptical of sweeping terms like ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’, and more alive to campaigns of destruction against groups defined by political affiliation, social class and gender, to cite just three additional variables. Accordingly, scholars of comparative genocide in the last three decades have increasingly expanded their understanding of genocide to incorporate such groups. My own preferred 217

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns definition of genocide, slightly but significantly modified from that offered by Steven T. Katz, attests to this: genocide is ‘the actualization of the intent, however successfully carried out, to murder in whole or substantial part any national, ethnic, racial, religious, political, social, gender or economic group, as these groups are defined by the perpetrator, by whatever means’ (1994, 131). Should the concept of ‘destruction’ be limited to physical murder? The UN Genocide Convention in fact cites ‘killing members of the group’ as only one strategy of genocidal destruction. The others are: ‘causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group’; ‘deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part’; ‘imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group’; and ‘forcibly transferring children of the group to another group’. The ethical challenges involved in interpreting and applying this notoriously ambiguous language are immense. For instance, how ‘serious’ must the ‘bodily or mental harm’ caused to group members be, in order to qualify as genocide? How is ‘prevent[ing] births within the group’ to be reconciled with policies of population control that are widely accepted as legitimate exercises of state authority? Just to muddy the mix further, note that the Genocide Convention bans ‘direct and public incitement to commit genocide’, which might appear to conflict with the civil right of freedom of speech; and ‘complicity in genocide’, which may or may not include passive bystanders with a latent capacity to intervene, as well as moral and material backers of genocidal agents. To work through these and related quandaries of the Genocide Convention would occupy the remainder of this volume, and I suspect no two readers would emerge with precisely the same verdict on the ethical issues involved. Instead, I want first to stress that my preferred definition does privilege the dimension of mass murder, above more nebulous notions of ‘destruction’, and this understanding will guide the remainder of the discussion. Next, I want to focus on a phrase and a single word in the Convention: its reference to acts committed ‘with intent to destroy’ a designated group. Intent – in legal language, the mens rea (mental element) – is foundational to any ethical engagement with genocide. Like so much else, though, the subject is far from straightforward.

Intent No intent, no genocide. This is true of the Genocide Convention’s framing and of nearly all scholars’ favoured definitions. But intent to commit genocide must be carefully distinguished from the motive of the acts, which is fundamentally irrelevant. Consider the following analogy. You are aware that a house across the street contains a chest of valuable jewels, the theft of which will bring you great 

Katz wrote: ‘murder in its totality’ (emphasis added); the ‘in whole or substantial part’ is my interpolation. See the discussion in Jones (2006, 22–3). 218

Geno c ide: Et h ic al and No r mat ive Per spec t ives profit. But you also know that a family inhabits the house, and can be expected to oppose your designs; you may be forced to kill them to carry off your heist. You enter the house; the family does resist; you kill them and escape with the swag. Now, your motive was not to kill the family as such. But when you are caught and tried, as I hope you will be, the judge and jury will hardly believe that your murderous actions lacked intent. You entered the house fully aware of the possible consequences of your actions, and carried out your nefarious deed regardless. You will very likely be found guilty of murder in the first degree. This distinction between motive and intent is similarly central to a finding of genocide. In some cases – the Nazi Holocaust again serves as a paradigmatic example – there is a close correlation between the two. The Nazis consciously sought to exterminate the Jews of Europe (and others); their genocidal actions derived logically and organically from this aim. But what of other cases that are all too familiar from the historical record: when imperial conquerors, whose motive is to seize territory and exploit its riches, find (predictably enough) that they are opposed by the inhabitants of the territory, and feel obliged to kill them – whether through direct massacre or debilitating slave labour. It would be hard to deny that this constitutes intentional, indeed genocidal, mass murder. Let us look at two further scenarios derived from the above, both also distressingly common. In the first scenario, the indigenous population is killed not through direct massacre or brutal overwork, but by being stripped of its means of subsistence and consigned to barren and isolated territories. Is this result predictable – that is, should a reasonable person have expected it to occur? Even if it is not predictable, do the conquerors possess information that mass death is the result of their actions; and do they proceed with those policies regardless, or decline to intervene to ameliorate their effects? Now the second scenario: the conquerors arrive to find few if any indigenous people to conquer. The vast majority have already been destroyed – by diseases that spread like wildfire from the first moment of contact with foreigners who may be entirely unaware that they carry the pathogens, and ignorant of the science of epidemiology. Perhaps the foreigners are not conquerors at all, but merely explorers, or visitors, or would-be commercial traders. The diseases they carry are diffused among populations who may expire without ever having set eyes on those who bore the deadly germs to their shores. It will be apparent that, with regard both to elementary ethics and to genocidal intent, there are vital differences between these scenarios. As it happens, for a long time, many scholars and commentators were reluctant to assign the term ‘genocide’ even in cases where indigenous populations died by direct massacre, let alone from privation, disease and dislocation. It is tempting to ascribe this to the fact that most first-generation scholars hailed from the US, Canada, the UK and Australia – countries built on precisely these patterns of dispossession and native population destruction. D issidents there always were, however; and today the link between colonialism and genocide is one of the most fertile lines of inquiry in the entire field, represented by scholars such as D irk Moses, Jürgen Zimmerer

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns and Benjamin Madley. These historical explorations have been accompanied by more nuanced attention to the nature of genocidal intent, both in scholarship and in the international case law of genocide emanating from the international criminal tribunals established for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (ICTY and ICTR) in the 1990s. According to John Quigley, the current trend in legal interpretation is to admit ‘scenario[s] … [in which] an actor who engages in conduct that may bring about the destruction of the group, and who realized that destruction may follow but is indifferent to that result.’ Likewise, ‘an actor who engages in conduct that may bring about the destruction of the group and who does not realize that destruction may follow but, under the circumstances, should so realize’ may also be culpable (Quigley 2006, 111). At the opposite end of the spectrum from up-close direct killing, and some distance removed as well from the more indirect scenario just discussed, there is the apparent absence of agency and intent in the foreigner who spreads pathogens unknowingly, even to people with whom he or she has had no physical contact whatsoever. The result may be hecatombs of corpses, but most scholars would hesitate to apply the ‘genocide’ label in the absence of such intent, and the mens rea of a conscious understanding of the implications of one’s actions or mere presence. Might one add further nuance to the ethical aspect by establishing gradations or degrees of genocidal intent? One who has so attempted is Ward Churchill, who suggests that we distinguish among: (a) Genocide in the First Degree, which consists of instances in which evidence of premeditated intent to commit genocide is present. (b) Genocide in the Second Degree, which consists of instances in which evidence of premeditation is absent, but in which it can be reasonably argued that the perpetrator(s) acted with reckless disregard for the probability that genocide would result from their actions. (c) Genocide in the Third Degree, which consists of instances in which genocide derives, however unintentionally, from other violations of international law engaged in by the perpetrator(s). (d) Genocide in the Fourth Degree, which consists of instances in which neither evidence of premeditation nor other criminal behavior is present, but in which the perpetrator(s) acted with depraved indifference to the possibility that genocide would result from their actions and therefore [failed] to effect adequate safeguards to prevent it (1997, 434–5).

 

For representative readings from this school, see Moses (2008), Zimmerer (2005) and Mann (1999). The foundational contributions of Barta (2000) and Churchill (1997) should also be acknowledged. Quigley emphasizes the applicability of this framing to the cases of imperial conquest we are considering here: ‘If an actor interested in access to land or resources kills in order to gain that access, but understands that by doing so he is destroying the group, he may be guilty of genocide even if his killing was only a means to the further end of securing access’ (2006, 125). 220

Geno c ide: Et h ic al and No r mat ive Per spec t ives The distinction between Churchill’s second-degree genocide (characterized by ‘reckless disregard’) and fourth-degree genocide (resulting from ‘depraved indifference’) remains hazy to me; but this is nonetheless an honest and inspired attempt to adapt the ethical-legal distinctions drawn in domestic legislation against homicide, to a concept – genocide – that has usually resisted such shadings.

Justification I return now to one of the questions raised at the outset: is genocide ever justified? In raising it in my book Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, I noted that the query ‘is not often posed in genocide studies’ and ‘may provoke a collective intake of breath’ (2006, 28). The gasp is founded in the ethical revulsion that genocide evokes, perhaps above all other crimes; and in the collective rejection of any notion that genocide could ever be ethically defended. Nonetheless, there is a sense in which genocide undoubtedly is justified: empirically, in that a great many people have justified it at one time or another. Usually, a crucial step in the process is to deny that the actions in question constituted genocide (I consider the matter of denial in the following section). Still, every single case of genocide examined by scholars or prosecuted under law has its apologists and defenders. And most of them do not resemble goose-stepping neo-Nazis. They may instead resemble Christopher Hitchens, a noted left liberal commentator who reacted to the condemnations of colonialism at the time of the quincentenary of Christopher Columbus’s invasion of the Americas by arguing that such complaints were as pointless as ‘complain[ing] about climatic, geological or tectonic shift’. This was simply ‘the way that history is made’, Hitchens averred, and in the case of the colonial conquest of the Americas, it had ‘inaugurated a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation, and thus deserves to be celebrated with great vim and gusto’ (Hitchens, 1992). This is classic utilitarian reasoning, and there is little doubt that if the Nazis had won the Second World War, their apologists likewise would have celebrated the conquest and destruction of European populations ‘with great vim and gusto’, for the ‘inaugurat[ion of] a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity’ and Aryan supremacy that it supposedly inaugurated. Until very recently, such reasoning – that the end justifies the genocidal means – was pervasive in Western societies. Many people still proclaim it ringingly today, though thankfully fewer than before. So much for the triumphalism of the conquerors and the inheritors of their conquests. What about when the victims of an oppressor’s designs resist subjugation 

Given that Hitchens was subsequently transformed by the events of 11 September 2001 into one of the most ardent and avowedly principled opponents of ‘Islamo-fascism’, I have often wondered what he was so upset about. By his standards, were not the 9/11 attacks ‘the way that history is made’, and all protests against Islamist terrorism, including his own, merely ‘empty’ posturing? 221

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns – and do so by means that may themselves be genocidal? The concept of genocide, from its inception in Raphael Lemkin’s work, was underpinned by an ethically laudable preoccupation with the vulnerabilities of minority populations. The early definition of genocide offered by the sociologist Irving Louis Horowitz – ‘a structural and systematic destruction of innocent people by a state bureaucratic apparatus’ (1997, 21) – is typical of many framings, which view genocide as something that powerful oppressors inflict upon powerless and oppressed groups. But nothing in the UN Genocide Convention, for example, states that genocide must be waged by the structurally dominant against the structurally dominated. And there is considerable historical evidence that when subjugated populations rise up against their tormentors, they regularly do so ‘with intent to destroy’ the oppressor class ‘in whole or in part’. In a volume that I have coedited with Nicholas Robins, whose earlier work explored such genocidal uprisings by native populations in the Americas, we consider the previously unexplored theme of subaltern genocide, or ‘genocides by the oppressed’ (Robins and Jones, forthcoming). A particularly vivid instance is the great Haitian slave rebellion of the 1790s, extending into the first years of the nineteenth century. ‘In a volcanic outburst of racial violence’, the victims of one of the most murderous – indeed genocidal – slavery systems ever instituted ‘systematically murdered nearly every white they could set their hands upon’ (ibid.); and ‘when the genocide was over’, in Philippe Girard’s words, ‘Haiti’s white population was virtually non-existent’ (2005, 140). This cursory overview ignores the equally massive atrocities inflicted by vengeful French whites against the African rebels. Nonetheless, it is clear to us that genocidal strategies were deployed on both sides, reciprocally. For the liberal-minded, these ‘genocides by the oppressed’ produce something of an ethical dilemma. We sympathize and identify with innocent populations driven to the extremity of violent rebellion by the outrageous, frequently genocidal conditions to which they are exposed. But we must also confront the ‘intent to destroy’ evident in some of the strategies of resistance – or, perhaps more commonly, in acts of violent retribution that occur when previous power relations are overturned and ‘the rabbit’s got the gun’ (Jones, forthcoming). Other potential cases of subaltern genocide include the persecution and large-scale killing of ethnic Germans in formerly Nazi-occupied territories toward the end of the Second World War, and in its aftermath; the retributive dimension of Serb atrocities against ethnic populations deemed collectively complicit in the genocide of Serbs during the same war; the harnessing and mobilization of subaltern furies by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia; and the genocide waged against Tutsis by the Hutu Power movement in Rwanda in 1994, which harked back to the Hutus’ previous subjugation by a Tutsi-dominated regime, and played upon Hutu fears of a return of Tutsi hegemony. Some instances of subaltern genocide are nothing more than vengeful expressions of rage and humiliation by populations that no longer confront an imminent threat of destruction. Though psychologically comprehensible, they are ethically indefensible. But in cases of a protracted struggle to the death against genocidal oppressors, as with the Haitian revolt and the indigenous uprisings 222

Geno c ide: Et h ic al and No r mat ive Per spec t ives examined by Nicholas Robins in his book Native Insurgencies and the Genocidal Impulse in the Americas (2005), there is a genuine ethical quandary to be confronted: whether genocide may be inflicted in self-defence, and if so, whether its perpetrators may be granted some of the same exculpatory consideration that those who kill under duress or in self-defence receive in most domestic legal contexts. Having placed this explosive subject on the table, however, I will avail myself of the cowardly excuse of a lack of space, and engage with it no further.

Denial In the previous section, I noted that a justification regularly offered for acts that are, on their face, genocidal is to deny that genocide has been committed at all. In the contemporary period, genocide denial is associated most strongly with two twentiethcentury cases. The first is the Ottoman genocide of Christian populations (generally referred to as the Armenian genocide, though Assyrians, Greeks and other Christian minorities were targeted in a qualitatively and proportionally similar manner). Representatives of the modern Turkish government and people have mounted a systematic propaganda campaign to exculpate their forebears of responsibility, and applied diplomatic and financial pressure to promote the notion that whatever the suffering of Armenians and others under the Ottomans, it occurred amidst ‘the fog of war’ – that is, without the central state planning that many still require for a finding of genocidal intent – or was part of a campaign of reciprocal killing, that is, with the Christian minorities responsible for concomitant atrocities against Turks. The second prominent case of denial concerns the Nazi Holocaust against Jews and other European populations. This is both a more global phenomenon and one more limited to the political fringes. Indeed, in many countries (including my own, Canada), denial of the Holocaust is considered so obnoxious that it is the subject of legal sanctions; Canadian citizens and residents have lost jobs, been prosecuted or been expelled from the country for asserting that Jews were not murdered en masse by the Nazis, that the infamous gas chambers never existed, and so on. What measures may reasonably be employed against genocide deniers? One problem has already been alluded to: while denial of the Jewish Holocaust and, more recently, the Armenian genocide has been prosecuted and its proponents roundly vilified, genocides on a comparable or even more massive scale, such as those of the indigenous populations of the Americas, are standardly denied – or merely ignored, which is itself a form of denial. Sometimes, as with Christopher Hitchens’s repugnant contentions, they are even celebrated ‘with great vim and gusto’. Yet until recently this evoked little protest, and there is certainly nothing comparable, in any country, to the laws and formal sanctions directed against Holocaust deniers. Who, therefore, has a right to determine which genocides may safely be denied (even celebrated), and which are considered beyond the pale? 

The fate of the Assyrians at Ottoman hands is outlined in Travis (2006). 223

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Another difficulty is that the ‘cure’ of repressing genocide denial may be worse than the disease – in two senses. First, imposing legal sanctions upon deniers, setting aside the inconsistencies and hypocrisies just mentioned, risks casting as victims those who have placed themselves squarely in the camp of the genocidal victimizers. In Canada, morally contemptible individuals like Jim Keegstra (an Albertan educator fired from his teaching position and subjected to repeated litigation) and Ernst Zündel (expelled to his native Germany) likely would have remained marginal figures, were it not for the causes célèbres that their prosecutions became. Second, such sanctions may set a strong precedent for constraining or suppressing rights of free speech, belief and association which are essential to the functioning of a democratic society – the familiar ‘slippery slope’ argument against impinging upon liberal freedoms. Finally, it should be recognized that not all ‘genocide denial’ is ethically objectionable, and much of it may be positively desirable. Let me clear about my meaning here. Just as there is no consensus position in the community of genocide scholars as to exactly what constitutes genocide (the UN Convention definition comes closest, but is itself riddled with imprecisions and ambiguities), so too there is lively disagreement over whether given cases of mass violence deserve to be labelled as ‘genocide’. Scholars may feel that a particular case lacks sufficient evidence of central organization or requisite intent, or is insufficiently large-scale to qualify as genocide, or for various reasons is better labelled as ‘war’ (even ‘just war’), as ‘terrorism’ (see Zimmerer 2006) or as ‘crimes against humanity.’ While some such arguments annoy me, only rarely would I dare to denounce their proponents as ‘unethical’. More often, our disagreement occurs in the context of ordinary, if impassioned, academic discussion and public debate. D oes this unfairly stack the deck in favour of a permissive approach to genocide denial? Powerful counterarguments do exist, and they have been eloquently set out by, among others, Roger Smith, Robert Jay Lifton and the late Eric Markusen – for all of whom I have the greatest respect. In a 1999 essay, these authors contended that ‘denial of genocide [is] an egregious offense that warrants being regarded as a form of contribution to genocidal violence’. It ‘continues the process’ of genocide, and ‘may increase the risk of future outbreaks of genocidal killing’ (Smith et al. 1999, 287, 289). If denial is indeed the equivalent of shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre, with predictable destructive consequences in the real world, then a strong ethical case can be made for suppressing such speech. A further analogy can be drawn with libellous speech, which is regularly suppressed in liberal democratic societies. D oes not genocide denial represent a libel, not of individuals alone but of entire peoples? I nonetheless reiterate the extraordinary ethical challenges of distinguishing ‘acceptable’ from ‘unacceptable’ denialist speech; the ethical inconsistencies and hypocrisies that often accompany such deliberations; and the possible chilling consequences for cherished liberal freedoms. On balance, I have argued that genocide deniers, ‘and the initiatives they sponsor, are best confronted with a combination of monitoring, marginalization and effective public refutation. Such refutation can be accomplished by visible and vocal denunciation, informed by conscientious reportage and scholarship, as well as through proactive campaigns in schools and the mass media’ (Jones 2006, 357). 224

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Intervention In the last couple of centuries, a moral conviction has grown among the states and peoples composing ‘international society’ that certain crimes – and certainly ‘the crime of crimes’, genocide – must not be waged unchallenged. Wherever possible, genocide should be prevented; where it cannot be prevented, it should be promptly extinguished; and where both prevention and suppression have failed, it should at least be effectively punished. Most recently, rigidly militarized concepts of ‘security’ have shifted toward a new concept of ‘human security’ – emphasizing not the protection of states from other states, but of people from their own states. This has spawned the notion of a ‘responsibility to protect’, accompanied by a positive obligation to intervene by military force in cases of ‘large-scale loss of life, actual or apprehended, with genocidal intent or not … or large scale “ethnic cleansing”, actual or apprehended, whether carried out by killing, forced expulsion, acts of terror or rape’ (ICISS 2001). Yet even this apparently straightforward obligation to protect defenceless people encounters a range of obstacles. Many are practical or logistical, and beyond the bounds of this discussion. From an ethical perspective, however, it is fair to ask: who decides which cases warrant intervention, and how ethically consistent are such calls? Might even the most noble interventionist aspirations create a ‘moral hazard’, becoming grist for political entrepreneurs who see them as a means of realizing a desired outcome – say, secession and independence – and who therefore provoke states into committing atrocities, precisely to generate outside intervention that bolsters their cause? The answer to the first question is that, historically, interventions have been mounted either by neighbouring states seeking to suppress genocides that have ‘spilled over’ onto their own territory, via armed incursions or refugee flows; or by the world’s most powerful states, notably the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the US, the UK, France, Russia and China). Examples of neighbourly interventions are quite common, and the results are often hard to gainsay from an ethical perspective (for example, India’s intervention in East Pakistan, which ended the Bangladeshi genocide of 1971; or Vietnam’s in Cambodia, which evicted the genocidal Khmer Rouge from power). But as Nicholas Wheeler has shown in his sterling study, Saving Strangers (2000), almost none of these interventions was mounted with an explicitly moral-ethical justification. All were defended on the grounds of a threat to ‘security’ as traditionally construed. Occasionally, as well, such interventions have installed regimes scarcely better or even worse than the ones they replaced: witness Tanzania in Uganda in 1979, which substituted the despotic Milton Obote for the psychotic Idi Amin, or the US and UK in Iraq in 2003, which has produced a death toll apparently far exceeding that of the sanguinary Saddam Hussein regime.



For a discussion of some of the practical challenges of intervention in genocide, see Heidenrich (2001). 225

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns The Iraq war, explicitly justified on ‘humanitarian’ grounds, was opposed by the vast majority of publics worldwide, because the ‘ethical’ aspect was deemed a pallid cover for oil-thirsty imperialism and great power realpolitik. A vigorous critical strand of Western thinking sees ‘humanitarian intervention’ in general as underpinned by such cynical motives, and contends that such interventions should be mounted (a) only very rarely, and (b) only if they can be effectively internationalized and democratized (such as through UN mechanisms that extend beyond the elitist Security Council, or by non-Western regional organizations ). An interesting extension of this cautionary line of thinking is the ‘moral hazard’ argument noted above. Focusing on NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999, allegedly to suppress a fresh genocidal campaign launched by the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic, Alan Kuperman (2006) has argued that militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were aware that their own actions could never suffice to evict Serb forces from Kosovo and secure independence for its ethnic Albanian majority. Accordingly, Kuperman claims that the KLA provoked Serb forces into launching a brutal crackdown that would arouse global outrage and generate calls for urgent military intervention. One can question whether, in the wake of the pusillanimous Western responses to both the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides a few years earlier, the KLA could reliably have predicted an armed intervention substantial enough to save its forces from destruction and prevent the imposition of an even harsher Serb regime in Kosovo. Nonetheless, the result was broadly in keeping with the KLA’s most cherished ambitions. Serb forces departed, an international protectorate was established, and in 2008 Kosovo unilaterally declared independence, quickly recognized by the US and most western European countries. Kuperman has been similarly sceptical of the tactics and motives of rebel movements in the D arfur region of Sudan. His ‘moral hazard’ thesis at least stands as a useful corrective to idealistic and superficial analyses of conflict situations that may be less black and white than proponents of ‘humanitarian’ intervention deign to acknowledge.

Justice ‘After such knowledge, what forgiveness’ (Randal 1998) – and what measure and methods of justice? As genocide sometimes appears to lie beyond the bounds of ethical debate, so might it be seen to make a mockery of justice seeking: as Terrence D es Pres wondered, ‘What can justice mean when genocide is the issue?’ (1976, 47). The earlier discussion of subaltern genocide hinted at one means of pursuing ‘justice’ in the wake of genocidal slaughter: violent retribution, whether selective or indiscriminate. Indeed, nearly all cases of genocide have been followed by mortal 

For a cogent argument along these lines, in the specific context of genocide, see Holmes (2002). 226

Geno c ide: Et h ic al and No r mat ive Per spec t ives acts of vengeance. These may be directed at individual perpetrators: Raphael Lemkin’s original finding of an ‘inconsistency’ in international law was sparked by the vigilantism of a survivor of the Armenian genocide, Soghomon Tehlirian, who gunned down one of the genocide’s architects, Talaat Pasha, on a Berlin street in 1921. Tehlirian’s individual act generated widespread sympathy, and he was actually acquitted of murder. D istressingly often, though, vengeance has been so massive and systematic as to be itself genocidal. Examples include the depredations against ethnic Germans in formerly Nazi-occupied Europe, already referenced, and the rampage through Rwanda by the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in the wake of the 1994 genocide against Tutsis, followed by a large-scale killing campaign against Hutu populations in neighbouring Zaïre (now the D emocratic Republic of Congo). However understandable they may sometimes be, given the prior suffering of the perpetrator populations, such indiscriminate campaigns are hardly defensible from any ethical standpoint. International law in the twentieth century featured successive attempts to shift justice for mass atrocity beyond ad hoc measures and Carthaginian solutions (such as the notorious ‘Morgenthau Plan’ briefly entertained by President Roosevelt’s cabinet near the end of World War II, which would have seen millions of Germans carted off to forced labour in the Soviet Union, and reduced all Germany to a supine and deindustrialized state). A crucial feature of the seminal legal institutions established in 1945–46 to try the architects of wartime genocide – the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals – was that they avoided an imputation of collective guilt. Individuals were tried as such, and no blanket punishments were imposed on the German or Japanese people. The UN Genocide Convention is likewise explicit that genocide is an individual crime; the most recent round of legal institutionbuilding – the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (ICTY and ICTR), together with the International Criminal Court (ICC) created in 1998 – incorporate this framing, and carry it a step further: even for individual perpetrators of a holocaust, punishment has its limits. They may be jailed for life, but not executed – as selected Nazi and Japanese génocidaires were at Nuremberg and Tokyo, and as Nazi functionary Adolf Eichmann was after his trial in Israel in 1961–62. Justice in tribunal settings is necessarily slow, expensive and highly selective. For example, of the tens of thousands of active perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide, the ICTR, by the time it concludes deliberations in 2010, will have adjudicated only a few dozen cases. The temptation has been to focus on the upper echelons of génocidaire ranks, together with a handful of underlings. In the Rwandan case, this left more than 100,000 individuals incarcerated for years in the jails of a national penal system, with almost no prospect of trial by a judicial apparatus that was underdeveloped to begin with, and then had been virtually shattered by the 1994 genocide. At what point did the requisites of justice seeking becoming manifestly unjust? Logistical burdens and mounting protests led to a unique solution: the native Rwandan institution of gacaca, village-level proceedings, was revived for those not directly accused of planning murders or committing them. The emphasis 

On the ‘Morgenthau plan’, see Bass (2000, 157–60). 227

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns was on restorative rather than retributive justice, and although gacaca was criticized for its deviation from formal legal standards, it was arguably the least worst option available to the post-genocide regime. Similar efforts at restoration and reconciliation, in place of punitive justice, have blossomed in the past two decades. The ethical foundations of the ‘truth and reconciliation commissions’ instituted around the world – most famously in South Africa after the collapse of the apartheid regime – lie in a desire to harmonize the need for post-conflict peace and progress with the equally urgent need of victims and their relatives to achieve recognition and symbolic restitution for their suffering. A cruel ethical dilemma is evident: perpetrators of brutal atrocities may go ‘scot free’, simply by rendering a full accounting of their crimes and expressing ‘sincere’ remorse for them.10 Proponents of such mechanisms counter, however, that this is preferable to delaying the transition to a post-atrocity society, fuelling revanchist forces and generating new violent conflicts. Surprisingly, even such limited forms of justice have sometimes been rejected by those who might seem to have the greatest interest in seeing them implemented. Evidence from African cases, such as Mozambique (riven by a vicious civil war in the 1970s and 1980s that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives) and more recently Uganda, demonstrates that certain populations view post-conflict justice seeking as ‘stirring up the past’. Rather than accept institutions imposed from above and without, they have emphasized traditional rituals of healing and purification, granting perpetrators absolution for their crimes and restoring them to the community. A problem, though, is that genocide and similar atrocities are today defined as ‘crimes against humanity’11 – suggesting they are an affront to all human beings, not just the proximate victims. Which actors can claim ethical precedence: those constituting the amorphous collective we call ‘humanity’, or the individuals most directly victimized? This tension, a conflict of ‘right against right’, will only increase as issues of postgenocide justice move to centre stage in national and international debates.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have tried to outline some of the ethical aspects and dilemmas of genocidal perpetration, justification, intervention and justice-seeking. It remains to be asked: what might a post-genocidal world look like, and on what ethical foundations could it be constructed? Some, surveying millennia of human carnage, would consider the quest for a world free of genocide to be quixotic, if not dangerously naïve. Others, however, would note the successes – often limited and contingent, but sometimes quite striking and decisive – in suppressing such

 For trenchant surveys, see Hayner (2001), Minow (1998) and Verdeja (2004). 10 On the playing-out of this scenario in the South African context, see Krog (2000). 11 For an overview of this intriguing concept and its evolution, see Jones (2008). 228

Geno c ide: Et h ic al and No r mat ive Per spec t ives durable institutions as slavery, colonialism, state-administered torture and capital punishment. Perhaps an end to genocide is not as chimerical as it may appear. The roots of genocide lie in the human capacity to negate and anathematize the ‘other’: to expel him or her from the ‘universe of obligation’, in Helen Fein’s evocative phrase (1993, 26). Usually, this is done for instrumental purposes: to buttress group solidarity and cohesion in the face of an ‘outside’ world deemed threatening and unpredictable; to satisfy a greed for riches, power and prestige; or to bolster a communal sense of purity and ethical-spiritual superiority. Perhaps an ethical stance against genocide can be derived from a negation of precisely the negation that genocidal ideologies and processes represent. This would involve an ethics of care rather than coercion, of mercy instead of retribution, of solidarity not division, of a cosmopolitanism taking precedence over xenophobia and narcissism, and of non-violence in place of conflict, except in the most stringent cases of selfdefence.12 All these ethical approaches seem eminently practical, in that they have been successfully implemented in diverse real-world settings. They are also morally desirable, if our species is to relegate genocide to the margins or beyond, and to stave off cataclysm on the numerous other fronts surveyed in this volume.

References Ackerman, P., and D uVall, J. (2000), A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Palgrave). Barta, T. (2000), ‘Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia’, in Wallimann, I., and D obkowski, M. (eds), Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Cases of Mass Death (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press). Bass, G. (2000), Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Churchill, W. (1997), A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present (San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books). D es Pres, T. (1976) The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Fein, H. (1993), Genocide: A Sociological Perspective (London: Sage). Girard, P. (2005), ‘Caribbean Genocide: Racial War in Haiti, 1802–1804’, Patterns of Prejudice 39:2, 138–61. Hayner, P. (2001), Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (London: Routledge). Heidenrich, J. (2001), How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen (Westport, CT: Praeger). Hitchens, C. (1992), ‘Minority Report’, The Nation 19 October. Holmes, S. (2002) ‘Looking Away’, London Review of Books 14 November.

12 On strategies of non-violence, see Schell (2003); Ackerman and D uVall (2000). 229

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Horowitz, I. (1997), Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books). International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) (2001), The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa, ON: International D evelopment Research Centre). Jones, A. (2006), Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (London: Routledge). — (2008), Crimes Against Humanity: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld Publishing). — (forthcoming), ‘“When the Rabbit’s Got the Gun”: Subaltern Genocide and the Genocidal Continuum’, in Robins and Jones (eds). — and Robins, N. (forthcoming), ‘Introduction: Subaltern Genocide in Theory and Practice’, in Robins and Jones (eds). Katz, S. (1994), The Holocaust in Historical Context, Vol. 1: The Holocaust and Mass Death before the Modern Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Krog, A. (2000), Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa (New York: Three Rivers Press). Kuper, L. (1981), Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Kuperman, A. (2006), ‘Suicidal Rebellions and the Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention’, in Crawford, T., and Kuperman, A. (eds), Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention (London: Routledge). Lemkin, R. (1944), Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (Washington, D C: Carnegie Institute for International Peace). Mann, M. (1999), ‘The D ark Side of D emocracy: The Modern Tradition of Ethnic and Political Cleansing’, New Left Review 235, 18–45. Minow, M. (1998), Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence (Boston, MA: Beacon Press). Moses, A. (ed.) (2008), Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History (New York: Berghahn Books). — and Stone, D . (eds) (2006), Colonialism and Genocide (London: Routledge). Quigley, J. (2006), The Genocide Convention: An International Law Analysis (Aldershot: Ashgate). Randal, J. (1998), After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? My Encounters with Kurdistan (Boulder, CO: Westview Press). Robins, N. (2005), Native Insurgencies and the Genocidal Impulse in the Americas (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). — and Jones, A. (eds) (forthcoming), Genocides by the Oppressed: Subaltern Genocide in Theory and Practice (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). Schell, J. (2003), The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People (New York: Metropolitan Books). Smith, R., Markusen, E., and Lifton, R. (1999), ‘Professional Ethics’, in Hovannisian, R. (ed.), Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (D etroit, MI: Wayne State University Press). Sofsky, W. (1997), The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). 230

Geno c ide: Et h ic al and No r mat ive Per spec t ives Travis, H. (2006), ‘“Native Christians Massacred”: The Ottoman Genocide of the Assyrians D uring World War I’, Genocide Studies and Prevention 1:3, 327–71. Verdeja, E. (2004), ‘Institutional Responses to Genocide and Mass Atrocity’, in Jones, A. (ed.), Genocide, War Crimes and the West: History and Complicity (London: Zed Books). Wheeler, N. (2000), Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Zimmerer, J. (2005), ‘The Birth of the Ostland out of the Spirit of Colonialism: A Postcolonial Perspective on the Nazi Policy of Conquest and Extermination’, Patterns of Prejudice 39:2, 197–219. — (2006), ‘From the Editors: Genocidal Terrorism? A Plea for Conceptual Clarity’, Journal of Genocide Research 8:4, 379–81.

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14 Gender and Human Rights Serena Parekh

This chapter examines women’s human rights and specifically the impact that gender has had on our understanding of human rights. For many people, however, such a chapter will appear either banal or unnecessary. It may appear unnecessary because the category of human rights already encompasses women, making any discussion of specific women’s human rights redundant. It may appear banal because aside from some extreme groups (the Taliban in Afghanistan for example) there are few who would deny that women are human and hence entitled to full human rights. This view, however, neglects a number of important facts. First, despite its almost universal normative force, women’s human rights have been extraordinarily difficult to uphold. This reveals the heavy impact gender has on human rights enforcement. Second, the movement for women’s human rights in the last 35 years has called for a radical reinterpretation of the traditional notion of human rights. This view of human rights was found to be inadequate to account for the impact of gender on human rights. As such, far from being banal or unnecessary, the relationship between gender and human rights continues to be a topic of ongoing significance for both human rights theory and practice. This chapter will examine the challenges posed to the traditional conception of human rights by the recent women’s human rights movement by looking at three specific areas. First, I will examine why the traditional conception of human rights is insufficient to deal with specific violations of women’s dignity. By examining the debate over whether human rights norms should be expanded to include violations in the private sphere, we will see why women’s rights remain a matter of some controversy. Next, I will look at three developments in human rights: the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of D iscrimination Against Women (CED AW), the D eclaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (D EVAW), and legal norms concerning rape in times of war, in order to understand 

In this context, we must understand gender as the socially constructed identities of men and women, including behavioral, psychological and social traits that come to seem natural and inevitable. ‘Gender’, a socially constructed category, is often contrasted with ‘sex’, which is usually considered to be a biological category (see de Beauvoir 1989).

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns how demands for theoretical changes in our understanding of human rights have led to practical changes in the form of human rights conventions, declarations and other legal protection. Finally, I will conclude by discussing why, despite much success on the level of formal prohibitions, much remains to be done in order to fully protect the dignity of women through a human rights paradigm.

The Inadequacy of the Traditional Notion of Human Rights All human rights documents since the Universal D eclaration of Human Rights (UD HR) in 1948 have entrenched a notion of non-discrimination. The rights outlined in the UD HR, and in subsequent documents like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) or the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), are meant to apply, without distinction, to women as well as men. Yet what feminists and others have noted is that, while important, the principle of non-discrimination is not sufficient to address the kinds of violations that rob women of their dignity. The reason this is so lies in the way that human rights have traditionally been conceived. Human rights are usually thought of as protection from harms committed by the state against private individuals. As such, at the root of human rights is a division between the public realm (the realm of the state or government, politics, the economy) and the private realm (the realm of the household, the family, and private life generally). In this traditional view, human rights violations must be committed by a state actor in the public realm. Thus what happens in the private realm, while it may be illegal or immoral, cannot constitute human rights violations. Yet the kinds of violations that affect women uniquely and most profoundly are violations that occur in the private realm and are committed by non-state actors – rape, assault and murder by male partners; forced trafficking and 





While the focus of this chapter is largely on civil and political rights and the elimination of discrimination and violence against women, the economic, social and cultural rights of women are also important. Rights such as access to education, health care and work, for example, which have both public and private dimensions, are equally essential for protecting women’s dignity. D ue to space constraints, however, they will not be discussed in this chapter. For example, Article 2.1 of the ICCPR reads, ‘Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognised in the present Covenant, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.’ Such statements of non-discrimination are common to international human rights documents. This long-held view of human rights is being challenged from within the legal community. Andrew Clapham, for example, holds that customary international law, international treaties and certain non-binding international instruments already create human rights responsibilities for non-state actors (2006, 21). 234

Gender and Human Righ t s prostitution; sexual harassment; forced pregnancy or abortion; female foeticide and infanticide; early and forced marriage; honor killings; and widowhood violations, to name a few (Merry 2006, 21). These specific violations were largely absent from the main human rights documents listed above and simple non-discrimination in the application of traditional human rights has not been enough to protect women from these kinds of abuses. The result is that issues traditionally of concern to men come to be thought of as the concerns to human beings generally, while the concerns of women come to be seen as the particular concerns of a distinct and limited category (see Charlesworth 1995, 105). Because it was unable to encompass the kinds of violations distinctive to women, feminists and others argued that the long-standing dichotomy between the public and private ought to be challenged. As Gayle Binion notes, ‘overcoming the international institutionalization of the public/private dichotomy is one of feminism’s greatest hurdles in creating an inclusionary approach to human rights’ (Binion 2006, 76). To begin, we can note that this division of the world into two realms is not value-neutral (see Rao 2001). This distinction goes back to ancient Greece. Aristotle, for example, often spoke of the greatness of the public realm in contradistinction to the futility of the private (see Aristotle 1984; Arendt 1998; Elshtain 1997). Since that time, the public realm has retained its reputation as the realm of importance while the private realm has often been considered unimportant or trivial from the point of view of politics. Consequently the private realm has, until very recently, received relatively little attention from the human rights community. One of the main justifications for maintaining this distinction is that power is thought to be operative only in the public realm, while the private realm, especially the home, is usually thought of as power-neutral. A largely unstated assumption in much political thought is that power resides largely in the hands of the state and state actors. Yet, as Susan Moller Okin and others have demonstrated, the domestic realm is far from neutral in regards to power. Power in families (husbands over wives, parents over children) is a factor in family life that is closely connected with differentials of power and dependency between the sexes. This power often manifests itself in violence and the kinds of violations listed above. Further, when power is understood in this way, we can see that the public/private distinction is a false dichotomy. State power is always infused in the private realm – for example, the state determines terms of marriage (such as who can marry, own property, divorce), treatment of children (when they must go to school, vaccinations they must have), etc. The decisions made by the state about the private realm often reflect the power men possess over women. For example, for many years common law deprived women of their legal personhood upon marriage and made it virtually impossible for women to divorce (Okin 1989, 128–130). Yet despite the evidence that the private realm is infused with power relation, the fact that state actors are 

As D onna Sullivan notes, it is especially true that the state intervenes in the private sphere when the state wishes to exercise control over disempowered communities. For example, police power is routinely exercised against poor, often minority families, without deference to family privacy (1995, 128). 235

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns not directly involved with violations in this realm has kept it from being seen as a legitimate domain of human rights concern. Another important reason why the specific violations of women’s dignity have often seemed off-limits to human rights is because they are frequently committed in the name of culture. Widow immolation, female genital cutting, honor killings and forced confinement to the home, to name a few examples, are often done in the name of culture, and culture is seen as quintessentially private. The state, and certainly the international community, ought not to interfere with the cultural practices of a group, however harmful they might seem to an outsider. This way of thinking, while having its roots in a legitimate concern (wanting to avoid the mistakes of colonialism and not unfairly impose one’s own values on another people), remains one of the most widely accepted reasons for not enforcing women’s human rights. Yet as Sally Engle Merry has shown, this view relies on a highly narrow, essentialist view of culture. It views culture as something static, unchanging and defined entirely in terms of how those in power wish to define it. It ignores the fact that culture is highly contested, porous, and contains pervasive struggles over values and practices. If we see culture as contested and filled with power relations, it becomes possible to see the way that political structures, legal regulations and institutional arrangements have an impact on culture. Culture can no longer be seen as purely private, but open to contestation and thus the legitimate domain of human rights norms (see Merry 2006, 9–15). D espite feminist challenges to the public/private dichotomy, there remains much resistance to this. In Binion’s view, ‘there appears to be little support outside of the feminist movement for broadening human rights principles to include a wider locus of abuse and a wider range of abusers’ (Merry 2006, 77). Part of the resistance comes from those who wish to preserve the status quo. For example, as Merry explains, gender violence is inextricably linked to cultural systems of marriage and kinship, and there is inevitably a conflict between protecting women from violence and preserving marriage. Because the only way to protect women from domestic abuse is often to separate them from their husbands, reducing violence against women will necessarily diminish the permanence of marriage as well as the power husbands have over their wives. This in turn will change the meaning of masculinity and femininity in a given society (Merry 2001, 90). While it is not surprising that there has been resistance from those who directly benefit from the status quo, much resistance has also come from the human rights community itself. Thomas Pogge, when explaining what human rights are, uses the example of domestic violence as the paradigm of what a human rights violation cannot be (2001, 192). For him, 



Abdullahi An-Na’im agrees with this view of culture: ‘culture is constantly contested in a political struggle between those who wish to legitimize their power and privilege and those who need to challenge the status quo in order to redress grievances, realize their human dignity and protect their well-being’ (1994, 173). He writes, ‘human rights violations, to count as such, must be in some sense official, and … human rights thus protect persons only against violations from certain sources. Human rights can be violated by governments, certainly, and by government agencies 236

Gender and Human Righ t s it is important to keep a strict separation between a human rights violation and acts that are merely immoral or illegal (namely, violations that occur in the private sphere). Likewise, Philip Alston fears that human rights principles will be diluted if they are forced to go beyond their original conception (Binion 2006, 78, n. 30). Even Amnesty International has only recently expanded their notion of human rights to include violence in the private sphere. This resistance testifies to the ongoing struggle to include all forms of violence and denigration of women in the private sphere as human rights violations.

CEDAW and DEVAW as Challenges to the Traditional Conception of Human Rights Since 1975, the UN has held a series of conferences that have dealt with women’s rights and a number of important documents have issued from these conferences (see Stamatopoulou 1995). A consistent theme of these conferences was a demand to move away from both a traditional conception of human rights (as primarily having to do with the public realm) and from a mainstream understanding of women’s rights (as requiring primarily non-discrimination). The mainstream understanding of women’s human rights was, for a long time, that the principle of non-discrimination was sufficient to ensure that women were treated the same as men by the state. What the women’s rights movements of the last 35 years did, however, was to demonstrate the need to move away from this liberal notion of formal equality to a more substantive notion. A liberal notion of formal equality holds that there should be no discrimination in how traditional human rights (namely civil and political rights) apply to women and, further, that this is enough to establish women’s equality with men. This was found to be insufficient because, as we saw above, it did not address the specific violations of women’s dignity that occur in the private sphere; it did not succeed in making women equal to men. On the other hand, a substantive notion of equality looks at human rights against the reality of women’s subordination within a political system (see MacKinnon 2006, 7). Substantive equality demands that we examine those structures, customs and traditions that render women vulnerable to denigrations of their dignity. It is only when equality is viewed in this way that certain gender specific violations – such



and officials, by the general staff of an army at war and probably also by the leaders of a guerrilla movement or of a large corporation – but not by a petty criminal or by a violent husband’ (Pogge 2001, 192, emphasis added). It is interesting that he is willing to include corporations and guerrilla movements as potential violators of human rights, even though they are generally considered to be non-state actors, but not violent husbands. As late as 1991, Amnesty International focused almost entirely on their original purpose of freeing prisoners of conscience. Thus, their primary concern was state action (Binion 2006, 78). Their current Stop Violence Against Women campaign began in 2004. 237

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns as violence against women – can be seen as human rights violations. To appreciate the extent to which these demands for women’s human rights challenged the traditional paradigm of human rights, let us look at two key documents.

CEDAW and the Private Sphere Perhaps the most significant document on women’s rights is CED AW – the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of D iscrimination Against Women (adopted by the UN in 1979). CED AW was significant because it was the first international, legally binding10 convention that focuses solely on women’s human rights. While its primary aim was to eliminate discrimination against women, its understanding of the cause of this discrimination was significant. It understood discrimination not merely as legal or political, but as rooted social customs and traditions, including the traditional roles that women often play. Article 5 is remarkable in that it holds governments responsible for changing customs and practices based on stereotypes of women and beliefs in women’s inferiority. Governments are now responsible for not only changing laws so that they apply without discrimination to women, but for modifying ‘the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customs and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women’ (CED AW, Article 5a). In essence, CED AW argues that formal, legal equality is not sufficient, given women’s often low status in particular cultures, and argues instead for a more substantive view of equality that requires eliminating pernicious stereotypes and harmful cultural and traditional practices. This document is significant, in part, because it refuses to accept the rigid division between the public and the private and insists that for women’s human rights to be realised, the state must have a positive impact on the supposedly private realm of culture, tradition and religion. Yet the difficulty of implementing Article 5 of CED AW is also striking. As AnNa’im has shown, there is often a gulf between religion and custom on the one hand, and the structures and mechanisms of the state on the other; the former cannot be changed by the latter simply at will. Even if the state had the political will, it is 

Another key document for women’s rights which deserves mention is the Vienna D eclaration and Program of Action (which was adopted at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993). This document was significant because of the stand it took concerning the use of culture to justify violating the rights of women: it held that culture cannot be used as a defence of the human rights violations of women. This was important in undermining the long-held view that because culture was essentially private, it could not be held to the same human rights standards as government behavior. See Brems (2006, 115) for a discussion of the battle between cultural relativists and feminists at the Vienna Conference. 10 A convention is legally binding only once a country has both signed and ratified it. Though CED AW is legally binding in this sense, the fact that it has the most reservations of any human rights convention has significantly weakened its legal force. 238

Gender and Human Righ t s often not easy for a government to influence cultural or religious practices. Policies created by those at higher levels might be frustrated by bureaucrats, local officials or local actors. D espite the difficulty involved, he does not hold this to be a reason to absolve governments of their responsibility, but he does urge the human rights community to be aware of the complexity involved with changing a culture (AnNa’im 1994, 170–77). In order for cultural change to be seen as legitimate, it cannot simply come from on high but must be rooted in the same sources of authority on which other cultural or religious practices are based. Yet initiating, encouraging and supporting this process of change is certainly something in which states can play a large role.

DEVAW and Violence in the Private Sphere While CED AW went a long way in undermining the public/private dichotomy in human rights theory and practice and calling for a more substantive notion of equality, many argue that it did not go far enough. CED AW is notably silent on one topic of great concern to women: violence against women.11 That violence against women – committed by private actors (husbands, boyfriends, fathers, brothers), in private spaces (the home primarily) – is in fact a human rights violation remains one of the last battle grounds for women’s human rights. According to Amnesty International, violence against women affects women in all countries, regardless of wealth, race or culture. Worldwide, at least one out of every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or sexually abused.12 Yet despite the almost universal prevalence of violations of the rights to life, health and safety, until recently it was not seen as a matter for human rights concern precisely because such acts are usually committed by private actors. A major change came about in 1993 when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the D eclaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (D EVAW). D EVAW was important for defining violence against women and outlining what states must do to combat it – states must work to prevent acts of violence, investigate them when they happen, and develop comprehensive legal, political, administrative and cultural programs to prevent violence against women. Though important, D EVAW’s main limitation is that it is a declaration that is not legally binding in the way that a convention or treaty is binding. As such, it is not as strong as it needs to be to effect real change. This, it has been suggested, reflects the lack of seriousness with which the international community continues to treat violence against women; it continues to be tolerated, both legally and socially, in a way that other more traditional human rights violations are not. 11 Though the Convention itself is silent on the topic of violence against women, the CED AW committee that monitors this Convention takes up violence against women as a key concern in its monitoring. 12 Amnesty International, ‘Stop Violence Against Women’, at <www.amnestyusa.org/ women/index.do>, accessed 11 July 2008. 239

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns The major difficulty in calling violence against women a human rights violation is that it is difficult to place state responsibility.13 How can the state be responsible for acts that it, or its representatives, did not commit? The answers given to this question can be divided largely into three groups: (1) the state has no responsibility for violence against women when it is committed by private actors because the state is simply not involved; (2) the state can be held accountable for violence against women only when it can be demonstrated that the state has failed to show due diligence in implementing and enforcing legal protections for women that ensure their civil and political rights; (3) violence against women is rooted in patriarchal traditions, customs and beliefs that often imply a denigrated view of women and the state is responsible for changing this structural paradigm, as well as stopping the violence that results from it. The first position is the view held by many in the human rights community (see Pogge 2001) and states around the world; it is the view that D EVAW and other women’s rights documents challenge. The second is a position held largely by those within the human rights community who are trying to reform human rights law to be better in line with the needs of women. This view challenges the notion that violence against women is private by showing the extent to which the state influences the behavior of private actors. The third position is a more radical position since it calls for responsibility for the root causes of violence and not just the violence itself. This view is implied by CED AW in Article 5 when it demands that governments change harmful customs and practices as well as laws. Since the first position is the most well known and well entrenched, let us look at the other two positions which pose a direct challenge to the dominant paradigm. The first position holds that states must be held accountable for violations that are the result of a systematic failure on the part of the state to provide the legal protections that are necessary to protect life, integrity and dignity (Romany 1994, 85–6). ‘The state will be responsible not directly for the private acts, but for its own lack of diligence to prevent, control, correct, or discipline such private acts through its own executive, legislative, or judicial organs’ (Cook 1994, 229). States are responsible when they fail to show ‘due diligence’ for creating and upholding laws that protect women from violence at the hands of private actors.14 O n this model, there are several ways that states can be held responsible for violence against women: it can fail to protect women from private actors by failing to arrest, 13 In the contemporary understanding of human rights, the state remains the primary actor. Though individuals have gained status under modern human rights law, it is ‘as beneficiaries of rights and as litigants against state defendants rather than as perpetrators of wrongs’ (Cook 1994, 237). Though the Rome Statute of 2002 changes this paradigm somewhat, the human rights violations that individuals can be accused of committing remain limited. According to Cook, while pirates and war criminals can be considered individually responsible, these are the exceptions that prove the rule that individuals are not bound by international law (ibid.). 14 D ue diligence requires the existence of ‘reasonable measures of prevention that a welladministered government could be expected to exercise under similar circumstances’ (Romany 1994, 103, quoting D raft Convention on the International Responsibility of States for Injuries to Aliens, Articles 1391 and 1392). 240

Gender and Human Righ t s prosecute and imprison those who commit violence against women (this can be seen as a failure of implementing the law in a non-discriminatory fashion); or it can fail to prevent violence against women by giving tacit agreement to the continuing violence (either through state policy or custom) (Romany 1994, 99–101). The legal precedent often cited for this view of responsibility is the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ 1989 decision Velasquez Rodriguez v. Honduras. This decision held that the Honduran government was responsible for politically motivated disappearances not overtly carried out by government officials. The court found the state responsible, even though state officials were not involved, because it failed to prevent the disappearances and punish those responsible. Further, the court held that the Honduran government was complicit in the disappearances ‘for creating a climate in which such violations could occur’ (Romany 1994, 102). This case, then, provides a blueprint for state responsibility for failing to prevent and punish violence against women. Yet what about countries that have good laws, good law enforcement and an efficient judiciary system, but where violence against women continues to occur at very high rates? In Europe, for example, domestic violence is a major cause of death and disability for women aged 16 to 44; in the US, a woman is raped every 6 minutes and battered every 15 seconds.15 For proponents of the above view (that violence against women is a human rights violation only when the state fails to show due diligence), we can say that these no longer count as human rights violations because the state has done all it could to prevent them. Yet for others, mere enforcement of the law is not sufficient to rid a state of its responsibility. According to Rhonda Copelon, we fail to see the connection between individual acts of violence and state responsibility because we fail to see ‘the parallel state of patriarchy’ and its harms and violence (1995, 138). It is a failure to see that the root of violence against women ‘lies in the structural inequality and subordination of women’ (ibid., 145). It is for similar reasons that Catherine MacKinnon concludes that violence against women is caused by sex inequality and consequently stopping violence against women must entail eliminating this inequality (2006, 30). According to Sheila D auer, this is precisely what was revealed by the Vienna Tribunal where the testimony of 33 women who had experienced violence was given in front of an audience of NGOs and country delegates to the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993. They concluded that the widespread failure to recognize violence against women as a human rights violation that required urgent attention was due in part to a lack of understanding of the systematic nature of the subordination of women and the structures which perpetuate this subordination (D auer 2001, 68). If this view is correct, then the human rights community must address the structural inequality involved in women’s subordination before it can adequately protect women from violence in the private sphere. This, of course, is no small task.

15 Amnesty International, ‘Stop Violence Against Women’ <www.amnestyusa.org/ women/index.do>, accessed 11 July 2008. 241

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Rape in War Another area of human rights concern that has changed dramatically in recent years concerns violence against women in the context of war. Norms of international human rights law have recently changed to prohibit rape and sexual violence in war in the strictest terms. However, what is interesting about this development is how long it took to happen despite it fitting into the traditional human rights paradigm. Many have argued that this reflects the international community’s overall tolerance for gender violence that is only recently starting to break down. ‘Less than a decade ago, it was openly questioned whether rape was a war crime. Human rights and humanitarian organizations largely ignored sexual violence and the needs of its victims’ (Copelon 2003, 1).16 Rape in times of war has occurred as long as war itself. What has changed in recent years is how this has been conceived. For most of history, the rape of women by victorious soldiers was considered both natural and inevitable; it was one of the spoils of war and a reward and incentive for soldiers. It was thought of as a necessary byproduct of war and thus its significance as a gender-based atrocity was overlooked. When the international community did attempt to prohibit it, the way rape was understood revealed important assumptions about gender and gender violence. For example, the Lieber Instruction of 1863, the first codification of customary international law of land warfare, outlawed rape because they considered it a problem of ‘troop discipline’ (Mitchell 2005, 224). In other words, rape was problematic because of how it affected soldiers, not because of what it did to women. The Hague Convention of 1907, in a similar vein, considered rape as a ‘violation of family honor’ (Copelon 2003, 1). In this formulation, rape was considered a crime against the family, not the woman who was raped. Stronger attempts were made to prohibit rape in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Article 27 of the fourth Geneva Convention states that ‘women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honor, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution or any form of indecent assault’. The problem with this formulation, as Catherine Niarchos points out, is that it attaches rape to the wrong category of rights. By considering rape as merely an offense against a women’s honor, they ignore the true injury to women – that it is a massive and brutal assault on the body and person. In addition, the injury that results from rape is defined by the point of view of society – that the injured woman is considered disgraced and dishonored by her peers. Certainly, if rape is considered merely an affront to honor or reputation, it must be less worthy of protection than the kinds of severe injuries to persons that result in war (Niarchos 2006, 294–5). Seeing rape as a violation of a woman’s or family’s honor has the effect of downplaying the harm done to women 16 On 20 June 2008, the UN Security Council affirmed that rape and other forms of sexual violence constitute war crimes and therefore belong on the Security Council’s agenda. This was a major breakthrough since as recently as 2007 China, Russia, and South Africa claimed that sexual violence was merely an unfortunate byproduct of war that was not a matter of international peace and security (Farley 2008). 242

Gender and Human Righ t s and rendering it less significant than other kinds of harms. Indeed, rape is absent from Article 32 of the fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits violations of physical integrity ‘which have shocked the conscience of the world’ (ibid., 294). The 1977 Protocols to the Geneva Convention improve this somewhat by prohibiting rape as an ‘outrage upon personal dignity’. Yet even this formulation does not express the fact that rape is a crime of violence. Indeed, the Protocols distinguish sexual assault from crimes of violence (ibid., 296). The inability of the international community to understand rape in war as a violent, gender-based assault came to an end with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 2002. The foundation for this was laid by a number of events in the 1990s: the visibility, for the first time, of former Korean ‘comfort women’ (sexual slaves for Japan during World War II); the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia which prosecuted rape and sexual violence as war crimes and crimes against humanity; and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda which prosecuted rape as genocide (Copelon 2003, 1–2). What is significant about the Rome Statute is that it names a broad range of sexual violent crimes as among the gravest crimes of war. Rape, forced pregnancy, sexual assault and enforced prostitution are also considered ‘crimes against humanity’ when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on civilian populations, in times of war as well as times of peace, by non-state actors as well as official state actors. Significantly, the Rome Statute recognizes that individuals can be targeted on the basis of their gender and thus views rape in war as specifically a genderbased violation. The definition of rape in the Rome Statute goes a long way in recognizing that rape is a gender-based atrocity on par with other long-recognized atrocities such as torture or genocide.17

Conclusion What is clear from this chapter is that the category of gender has had a tremendous impact on both our theoretical understanding of human rights and the way human rights norms are put into practice. While much has been achieved since the beginning of the movement for women’s human rights, much remains to be done. As many 17 The downside of this, of course, is that it risks normalising rape that does not occur in times of war. Rhonda Copelon is very critical of the treatment of genocidal rape, especially in the media, because it reinforces the idea that non-genocidal rape is normal, common and therefore tolerable (in contrast with the unique, heinous and hence intolerable form of genocidal rape): ‘To thus exaggerate the distinctiveness of genocidal rape obviates the atrocity of common rape’ (1995, 204). If we look at genocidal rape, she argues, we will see that it shares most of the features associated with ‘normal rape’ and further that the effect on women of rape is no less extraordinary if it is done during times of peace or times of war. Consequently, while the understanding of rape in the Rome Statute is important in prohibiting rape during times of war, it may have the unintended consequence of normalising rape during times of peace. 243

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns have noted, there remains a large gap between human rights norms and the reality of women’s lives. For example, though rape in war and violence against women are now formally prohibited, they are still largely tolerated and their prohibition frequently unenforced. D espite CED AW, D EVAW and the Rome Statute, women continue to experience rape, assault and other forms of violence, both in the public and private spheres, at extremely high rates. How can this be explained? There are at least two reasons that can be offered for this. The first is that, though formally prohibited, the impermissibility of violence against women or rape in war has not yet gained a strong enough normative force. Mitchell, for example, argues that the prohibition of rape must be considered a norm of jus cogens in order to overcome the disrespect that it is generally shown. Jus cogens norms are considered the most important norms in international law. They are peremptory norms that take precedence over other norms and laws and permit no derogation (Mitchell 2005, 230). Without making the prohibition of rape in all contexts a jus cogens norm, states will continue to think of it as less important than other violations such as genocide, torture and slavery. A second reason that is offered for the gulf between the condemnation of violence against women and its de facto tolerance has to do with the connection between violence and women’s subordination. Copelon insists that ‘formal justice alone will not eliminate these crimes … Rape and sexual violence are products of longstanding male entitlement to control and abuse of the bodies and lives of women and perpetuate women’s economic, political, cultural, sexual, and psychological subordination’ (2003, 3). Claudia Card adds to this that rape can never be completely eliminated unless the symbolic meaning of rape also changes. Currently the meaning of rape as a symbol is domination. This is in part why it seemed to so many for so long to be natural – because male domination over women was considered natural, rape, a symbol of this domination, was also considered natural (2005, 132). For both these authors, the legal prohibition of rape and violence against women is not sufficient to bring them to an end because they are still inextricably bound up with the subordination of women in systems of patriarchy. Human rights, in order to be effective, must challenge this structural injustice. Charlotte Bunch, one of the early leaders in the struggle for women’s human rights, wrote that ‘the concept of human rights, like all vibrant visions, is not static or the property of any one group; rather, its meaning expands as people reconceive of their needs and hopes in relation to it’ (2006, 58). If this is true, there is good reason to believe that human rights can be reconceptualised to better take account of violations of women’s bodies and dignity, both in the private and public spheres. Though obstacles remain, the gains made for women’s human rights since the 1970s give us reason to hope that in the coming decades any violation of women’s dignity will be greeted with the same horror and outrage as human rights violations like genocide, slavery, and torture. Indeed, the ‘vibrant vision’ of human rights would become dull without this.

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References Agosin, M. (ed.) (2001), Women, Gender, and Human Rights: A Global Perspective (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press). An-Na’im, A. (1994), ‘State Responsibility under International Human Rights Law to Change Religious and Customary Laws’, in Cook (ed.). Arendt, H. (1998), The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Aristotle (1984), The Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Beauvoir, S. de (1989), The Second Sex (New York: Vintage Books). Binion, G. (2006), ‘Human Rights: A Feminist Perspective’, in Lockwood (ed.). Brems, E. (2006), ‘Enemies or Allies? Feminism and Cultural Relativism as D issident Voices in Human Rights D iscourse’, in Lockwood (ed.). Bunch, C. (2006), ‘Women’s Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re-Vision of Human Rights’, in Lockwood (ed.). Card, C. (2005), The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Charlesworth, H. (1994), ‘What are ‘Women’s International Human Rights?’, in Cook (ed.). — (1995), ‘Human Rights as Men’s Rights’, in Peters and Wolper (eds). Clapham, A. (2006), Human Rights Obligations of Non-State Actors (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Cook, R. (ed.) (1994), Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press). Copelon, R. (1995), ‘Gendered War Crimes: Reconceptualizing Rape in Time of War’, in Peters and Wolper (eds). — (2003), ‘Rape and Gender Violence: From Impunity to Accountability in International Law’, Human Rights Dialogue 2:10, . D auer, S. (2001), ‘Indivisible or Invisible: Women’s Human Rights in the Public and Private Sphere’, in Agosin (ed.). Elshtain, J. (1997), ‘Moral Woman and Immoral Man: A Consideration of the Public Private Split and Its Political Ramifications’, in Goodin, R., and Pettit, P. (eds), Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology (Malden, MA: Blackwell). Farley, M. (2008), ‘UN Security Council Says Sexual Violence Akin to War Crimes’, Los Angeles Times, 20 June. Hayden, P. (ed.) (2001) The Philosophy of Human Rights (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House). Lockwood, B. (ed.) (2006), Women’s Rights: A Human Rights Quarterly Reader (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). MacKinnon, C. (2006), Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). Merry, S. (2001), ‘Women, Violence, and the Human Rights System’, in Agosin (ed.). — (2006), Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). 245

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Mitchell, D . (2005), ‘The Prohibition of Rape in International Humanitarian Law as a Norm of Jus Cogens: Clarifying the D octrine’, Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law 15:2, 219–57. Niarchos, C. (2006), ‘Women, War, and Rape: Challenges Facing the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’, in Lockwood (ed.). Okin, S. (1989), Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books). Peters, J., and Wolper, A. (eds) (1995), Women’s Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives (New York: Routledge). Pogge, T. (2001), ‘How Should Human Rights Be Conceived?’, in Hayden (ed.). Rao, A. (2001), ‘Right in the Home: Feminist Theoretical Perspectives on International Human Rights’, in Hayden (ed.). Romany, C. (1994), ‘State Responsibility Goes Private: A Feminist Critique of the Public/ Private D istinction in International Human Rights Law’, in Cook (ed.). Stamatopoulou, E. (1995), ‘Women’s Rights and the United Nations’, in Peters and Wolper (eds). Sullivan, D . (1995), ‘The Public/Private D istinction in International Human Rights Law’, in Peters and Wolper (eds).

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15 Children’s Human Rights and the Politics of Childhood Alison M.S. Watson

The issue of children and human rights would at first glance appear to be a noncontroversial area. Of all of the categories of person covered by international human rights legislation, it is arguably children who need our greatest protection, for it is they who suffer, or will suffer, the most as a result of those circumstances that continue to plague the international community – deprivation, wars, climatic degradation and disease. Figures suggest that around 26,500 children aged five and under die every day for reasons that are related to poverty, hunger and easily preventable illnesses, whilst more than 2 million children have died, and 6 million children have been permanently disabled or seriously injured, over the last decade as a direct result of armed conflict. Moreover, UNICEF figures suggest an estimated 20 million children have had to leave their homes as a result of war and the abuses of war and are living either as refugees or as part of the internally displaced within their own borders. Given such figures, it is no surprise that the most widely accepted piece of international human rights legislation in history is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), signed in 1989, and since ratified by almost every country in the world – Somalia and the US being the only two exceptions (a point to which this chapter will later return). However, scratch beneath the surface of such initiatives and we see a different story – one in which the protection of children may be more rhetoric than reality, and too where the very nature of the meaning of rights themselves become contested. This chapter seeks to examine the issues surrounding the exercise of children’s human rights, and how these translate into practice. After a brief history of the development of the current legal regime surrounding the child, this chapter will examine what I believe to be the key issues facing the human rights of the child in an international context – namely our own representation of the child and the notions of agency, rights and participation that result from this – from both theoretical and practical standpoints, and will demonstrate that their examination is important not only for children as rights-holders, but ultimately for everyone. The chapter will conclude with some suggestions for further research.

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Reflections on a Rights Regime The roots of the present human rights regime vis-à-vis children go back to the aftermath of World War I, when Eglantyne Jebb – the co-founder of the Save the Children Fund – drafted, as part of her work with refugee children in the Balkans, a Children’s Charter. In this document she argued that there were certain rights for children that should be claimed and universally recognized, and indeed that it was the duty of the international community to put such rights to the very forefront of their planning decisions: ‘It is our children’, Jebb argued, ‘who pay the heaviest price for our shortsighted economic policies, our political blunders, our wars’ (Hammarberg 1990, 98). What Jebb in fact created was a practical document later used as the basis for the Geneva D eclaration of the Rights of the Child that was adopted by the League of Nations in September 1924, and that set out five precepts governing the ‘duties’ that mankind had, ‘beyond and above all considerations of race, nationality or creed’. These included allowing the child to be first in receiving relief in times of distress and providing all manner of support to the ‘needy’ child (defined at the time as being those suffering hunger and sickness, orphans, and those who were ‘backward’ or ‘delinquent’). The language of the D eclaration may have moved on, but it remains a landmark document in that it set the tone for many of the child’s rights initiatives that followed, in particular in terms of the ‘children first’ ethos which was to become a fundamental element in later child rights campaigns (ibid.). Indeed, the 1924 D eclaration has been widely depicted as a turning point for international political efforts relating to the child, and too for the advocacy movement that surrounds them, providing inspiration for many of the efforts on their behalf that were to follow. Like many of these subsequent efforts towards putting children first, however, political events overtook political will, and the attempt to improve children’s lives at this time stalled as the world moved once again towards war. It would therefore be much later, in the aftermath of World War II, and following the 1948 approval by the UN General Assembly of the Universal D eclaration of Human Rights (UD HR), before the international community turned its attention once more to the welfare of the child, and it is in the work that was done during this time that the roots of the current international legal regime governing children can perhaps most clearly be recognized. Even before the Universal D eclaration was drafted a feeling existed, within non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in particular, that a separate document specifically examining the rights of the child was justified. As early as 1946, and during its first session, the UN Social Commission (the predecessor to today’s Commission for Social D evelopment) had expressed its view that the terms of the 1924 D eclaration on the Rights of the Child should be as binding on the peoples of the world in 1946 as they were in 1924. This may seem an odd statement to make, particularly given that it had never actually achieved a legally binding status; however, the 1924 D eclaration was arguably seen by the Social Commission as a morally binding document, and therefore the international community should feel as morally bound to it as it had appeared to be over 20 years previously (Alston 1994). The problem with this, of course, as with any discussion of human rights 248

Ch il dr en’s Human Righ t s and t h e Po l it ic s o f Ch il dh o o d legislation, is that there is an assumption of a moral universalism that signals consensus, where in actuality, as Ignatieff has noted, human rights ‘is nothing other than a politics, one that must reconcile moral ends to concrete situations and must be prepared to make painful compromises not only between ends and means, but between ends themselves’ (2001, 21–2). Nevertheless, the Social Commission’s position was the first step towards getting something more concrete on to the international agenda. This was followed by the 1948 Universal D eclaration of Human Rights (UD HR), which specifically mentions children in Articles 25 and 26(3), and two years later by the adoption of a D raft D eclaration on the Rights of the Child which was subsequently, at the request of the Security Council, scheduled for consideration in 1951, by the Commission on Human Rights (Alston 1994). Once again, however, political events external to the process took over. The Commission on Human Rights was preoccupied at the time both with the drafting of the International Human Rights Covenants and the arrival of the Cold War and as a result the Commission did not even hold a preliminary discussion of the D raft D eclaration until 1957 and did not turn to any serious drafting until it met in March 1959. The result was the adoption by the UN General Assembly, in November of that same year, of the second D eclaration on the Rights of the Child, a document that remains highly significant, and for a number of reasons. First, there was the D eclaration’s statement that ‘[t]he child shall enjoy special protection’ (Principle 2), effectively separating children from adults as a category under international law. Second, and perhaps its major contribution, was in the fact that it gave broad consent to the concept of children’s rights per se. At the time, none of the major international human rights instruments, including the UD HR and the two International Human Rights Covenants (which were then only in draft form) used the term ‘children’s rights’ or ‘rights of the child’. Instead it was assumed that since the overall corpus of human rights applied to children in the same way as to all other groups, there was no need to give any particular recognition to children. The second D eclaration, on the other hand, emphasized children’s emotional well-being, with the latter being seen as important not only for the welfare of any individual child, but also because of the ‘social capital’ that such well-being might help to engender, and the concomitant impact that this might have on the wider community. Additionally, the D eclaration emphasized the need for children to have access to emergency assistance, an emphasis that has become increasingly important given the fact that the changing nature of conflict, and the impact on civilians of so-called ‘new wars’ (Kaldor 2006), has meant that children are more likely than ever today to become victims of war and political violence. D espite the fact that its contemporary relevance demonstrates the efficacy of the 1959 D eclaration, at least in terms of its significance as an initial step towards a coherent child rights regime, the principles did not have a strong legal basis. As a declaration it remained merely a statement of the standards that the international community hoped would be achieved, rather than a document that was binding upon the UN member states (Hammarberg 1990, 98). It also had several shortcomings, the most striking of which was the relative absence of a wider discussion on civil and political rights (Alston 1994). Efforts aimed at formulating a more precise set of 249

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns standards were thus required to continue, and during the 1970s discussions began with regard to the possibility of formulating a UN convention on the rights of the child that, unlike previous efforts, would be binding under international law and would more clearly define the obligations that states had towards their children. This would also allow the international community to bring those measures that already existed together into one comprehensive law, thus addressing the differences in standards that existed between the member states in interpreting the prevailing legislation. By this time too there was an altered view of children and their capacities compared to when the declarations of 1924 and 1959 had been instituted, with much more of an awareness of children as social actors in their own right (ibid.). As Hammarberg notes: ‘Among the rights of children should not only be those related to protection and material welfare but also the rights to influence one’s own situation and to take part in decisionmaking’ (1990, 98). Thus, 20 years after the 1959 D eclaration, and during the International Year of the Child, Poland submitted a proposal for a Convention on the Rights of the Child to the General Assembly which was in turn submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Several bodies, alongside the working group of the Commission, contributed to the drafting of the Convention – including governments, UN agencies and NGOs, who made appropriate written and oral interventions (Cohen 1990, 138). The resulting document, the UNCRC, was adopted by the General Assembly in November 1989. The UNCRC is a wide-ranging document, providing a ‘gold standard’ that encourages its signatories to seek to improve children’s lives, whilst acknowledging the fact that under international law every child has certain basic rights that should be upheld. These include the right for a child to have his or her own identity, and to have a home and an education. The Convention also raises certain obligations that the state and the parents have to act in the best interests of the child, as well as acknowledging that children have the right to express their own opinions, and to have these opinions taken into consideration where appropriate (the now famous Article 12). Moreover, since its inception the UNCRC has been further enhanced to include two Optional Protocols adopted by the General Assembly in May 2000: the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict; and the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography. These additional protocols are significant in that they address elements of children’s welfare that were seen as only weakly covered in the UNCRC. For example, as Hammarberg notes, the article that addressed the issue of children in armed conflicts: … was weakened during the drafting process … The reason for the setback was pressure from the US delegation. A formulation that ‘no child’ should take a direct part in hostilities was adopted twice with consensus, with the US delegation included. But suddenly in November/December 1988 that decision was no longer acceptable. The US delegation requested a formulation that only those below fifteen should be protected against war service. As the commission worked in the spirit of consensus the others accepted; the most conservative voice played the tune (1990, 101). 250

Ch il dr en’s Human Righ t s and t h e Po l it ic s o f Ch il dh o o d What is ironic, of course, is that the US has yet to ratify the UNCRC despite the fact that the original document was in some ways weakened in order to attempt to ensure their agreement. That they have not yet done so is indicative not only of the contested nature of childhood itself, but of the way in which the place of the child within society remains a matter for debate. Arguably childhood, as much as it is a social construct, is also a social stereotype and thus subject to all of the power dynamics that such stereotyping engenders; that is, not just in terms of the power of economic exploitation and of physical coercion, but also of broader cultural or symbolic power, including the power to represent someone or something in a certain way within what Hall has termed certain ‘regimes of representation’ (1997, 259). For children, such regimes have resulted in contrasting characterizations and often ‘unchildlike behaviours’ that must be taken into account in any analysis of the boundary between adult and child (Aitken 2002). The result, as Wyness has persuasively argued, is that ‘a recurring set of dominant ideas within political and academic domains … draws a generational boundary between adults and children, in the process restricting children to subordinate and protected social roles’ (2000, 1).

The Child in the International System According to Article 1 of the UNCRC, a child ‘means every human being below the age of 18 years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier’. By setting 18 as the end of childhood, the UNCRC has appeared to buy into notions of a universal childhood, yet this is something that negates the contextuality of childhood: it differs from country to country and from culture to culture, and is ‘constantly contested within the bounds of a particular time and place’ (Hinton 2008, 288). Such a view does not mean that the worst forms of abuse against children’s rights are acceptable, but it does mean that contemporary experiences of childhood may continue to differ from what is assumed to be the ideal. Of course it should not be assumed that the UNCRC is designed to create an ideal childhood as doing so may ‘underestimate the subtle processes that the UNCRC is enmeshed within’ (Prout 2005, 32). As Lee notes: If the Convention had been intended to clarify children’s position, it would indeed crumple under this burden, but the Convention operates in a rather different way. Having generated childhood ambiguity, it then lays the responsibility for managing the ambiguity on the legislators and the policymakers of the states that have ratified it (2001, 95–6). The latter is no easy task, as views on childhood and its requirements differ even between those countries where it would be assumed that there would be a distinct similarity. For example, within Europe, a child in D enmark may decide upon the name that they wish to use from age 12, whereas in Luxembourg, that age rises to 18; in Italy, a child can work full time from 15, whereas in the Netherlands the age 251

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns at which a child may engage in full-time employment is 17; in Belgium, the age of criminal responsibility is 16, whilst in Ireland that age drops to 7 (D itch et al. 1998). This ambiguity regarding the nature of childhood also spills into the wider academic discourse. Within the childhood studies literature, the nature of childhood itself and the assumptions of ‘agency’ that flow from alternative representations of the child have become a significant site of negotiation between those who interpret children as fully competent social actors, able to make legitimate claims for the realization of their rights; and those who advocate a univalent theory of rights which interprets ‘the passage from infant to adult as a transition from object to person’ (Lomasky 1987, 157), their claims for rights thus only realized by adult actors on their behalf (Hughes 1989). Moreover, as Hughes has acknowledged, an interest in enhancing the rights of the child may actually have very little to do with children per se and much more to do with critiquing those states whose foundations are perceived to be fatally flawed, specifically because they allow the exclusion of any group in society from full political status and involvement (ibid.). The idea that there is a distinction between the category of person labelled ‘adult’ and the category of person labelled ‘child’ is an argument implicitly recognized in D urkheim’s differentiation between the child as ‘being’, and the child as a ‘becoming’, as a person ‘not fully formed’. Onora O’Neill has even questioned the appropriateness of the discussion of a language of rights when approaching ethical issues as they relate to the child, arguing that a focus on obligations may be more relevant when trying to safeguard children’s well-being (1988, 459). For O’Neill this issue originates in the question of the dependence and vulnerability of children. Because children actually are dependent (unlike some other ‘oppressed social groups’ who may find themselves in a plea for rights, such as indigenous peoples), O’Neill argues that the focus of interest should shift from the rights of children to the obligations that adults have to them. This is a not uncommon view, and one that indeed appears to characterize much of the language of those measures that have been designed to address the ‘rights’ of the child within the international system. However, interestingly, O’Neill herself registers unease regarding where the actual boundary between childhood and adulthood is drawn, recognizing that the variety of experiences that children under the age of 18 have may mean that some children, notably what O’Neill terms ‘mature minors’, can find themselves as a group in a position that is partly analogous to that of other oppressed social groups. This is similar to the arguments that Cockburn has made when examining what Allison James has termed the ‘rigid chronologization of the life course’: The definition of everyone under 18 as ‘non-adult’ obscures the enormous diversity of the age range 0–18, in which people spectacularly change in terms of physical, emotional and intellectual growth and have a wide range of skills and competencies which express a huge number of divergent needs (Cockburn 1998, 99). It may also, as Hinton (2008, 293) has discovered, impact upon the distribution of economic resources. If vulnerability is correlated with age, and more resources 252

Ch il dr en’s Human Righ t s and t h e Po l it ic s o f Ch il dh o o d are given the more vulnerable an individual, then policy-makers concentrate their efforts on the very young, once again marginalizing older children from policy response. Confusion therefore remains regarding where to draw the line between adult and child, the impact of doing so, why it is so often drawn in the place that it is and, in turn, what this means for the presumption of agency and the rights that children can feasibly claim as a result. Such confusion is not new, however. As Smith notes, as far back as 1872, ‘the child is clearly set up as possessing agency when in fact he has been constructed by the adult as agential specifically so as to be found wanting; the artifice identified as covering a lack has of course been projected onto the child by the adult’ (1998, 114). Such artifice feeds into a commonly held assumption, and one that may be challenged by recent research in the ‘new sociology of childhood’, that it is in fact the adult who decides what level of agency is to be attributed to the child. We see this, for example, in arguments made regarding when and why a child becomes a child soldier. Those ascribing a higher level of agency to the child assume that the child may make the decision themselves, based on prevailing circumstances. Others, however, may note that any such decision is made under the duress caused by the adult business of war and as such children are less active as social agents under such a decision. Interestingly such debates parallel debates in the literature surrounding whether or not women become sex workers. One side would argue that no woman would decide to do this unless under the duress of a system of domination that leaves her with this as her only choice, whilst others argue that this is a choice that women may make which for her provides the best option. In each case, what is prevailing is an idealization of the existing roles that each actor has – a ‘good’ child would not decide to be a soldier unless forced, and a ‘good’ woman would similarly not turn to prostitution unless under duress. Under such an assumption, the relationship between those characterized as ‘adult’ and those characterized as ‘child’ involves a power dynamic whereby the achievement of one (adulthood) appears to represent the acquiring of ‘influence’ over the other (the child). It is in this context that D alrymple and Burke (1995) have introduced the notion of ‘adultism’, a term that describes the domination by adults of children and young people which they see as having as significant a power dimension in the lives of young people as do racism and sexism to all ages. It is important too in considering the opportunities that children have to take on a wider public role, with adultism remaining as a barrier to the ability of children to undertake public action (Hinton 2008, 287). Moreover, the Western way of bringing up children is one of separation from adult society – whether through ‘scholarization’, or changing work and homelife patterns – and their marginalization from public life (Roche 1999). For adultism to be addressed, D alrymple and Burke argue that what is required is for adults to be prepared to give up some of the power that they have acquired with their achievement of adult status. Leonard and Keenahan (2004, 171) noted benefits from doing this, not only in terms of the emotional release for adults that the giving up of some responsibility may bring, but also, importantly, in terms 253

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns of the actual safety of the child within our society, in that constructing a child as vulnerable and dependant may in fact become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Such positive responses are unlikely to be the case, however, if we assume, as Grace and Llewellyn did almost fifty years ago, that adults actually enjoy their status as adults more when juxtaposed against the category of human beings that are experiencing ‘childhood’. Childhood is therefore not only a social construct but also a social stereotype that is subject to all of the power dynamics that such stereotyping engenders – not just in terms of the power of economic exploitation and of physical coercion, but also in terms of broader cultural or symbolic power, including the power to represent someone or something in a certain way within what Hall has termed certain ‘regimes of representation’ (1997, 259). For children, such regimes have resulted in contrasting characterizations and often ‘paradoxical features’ that must be taken into account in any analysis of the boundary between adult and child (Oldman 1994, 44), often reflecting the historical perception of children as either inherently evil (D ionysian) or fundamentally innocent (Apollonian), and play too into contemporary portrayals of the contrast between what constitutes an ‘ideal childhood’ and what does not. One particularly pertinent example of this is the recurring theme surrounding contemporary notions of (in particular, Western) childhood as an ‘institution’ in ‘crisis’, a situation that results, on the one hand from a notion that children in contemporary society experience childhood for longer, and on the other hand that somehow this childhood that they experience is far from what could be considered to be ‘childish’. For example, as birth rates have fallen, particularly in industrialized countries, children as a social group now represent a declining percentage of the overall population, something that potentially has a significant impact upon national economic and social conditions (Oldman 1994, 45). The children that are born are not expected to work (or at least not to work as part of a contribution to overall family income), and are effectively withdrawn from the workplace. As a result they become less economically useful but are considered instead to be ‘emotionally priceless’ (Zelizer 1985). Parents cosset (and alienate from adult society) these emotionally priceless children far more, resulting in effect in a lengthening of the period known as childhood, and a clearer differentiation of the boundary between adult and child (Qvortrup 1985). Moreover, an increasing concern for the safety of the Western child has forced them away from the public domain (playing in the street, shopping on their own) and into the private space of their homes (Summers 1995). As Wyness has persuasively argued, ‘a recurring set of dominant ideas within political and academic domains … draws a generational boundary between adults and children, in the process restricting children to subordinate and protected social roles’ (2000, 1). Again, however, it is by presuming such a boundary that in effect the child’s position is further weakened. If it is assumed that rather than any individual being one thing or another, adult or child, that they are instead an individual that is in the process of transformation, and that this process itself ‘marks not simply the passage of a being from moral neutrality to moral significance but instead 254

Ch il dr en’s Human Righ t s and t h e Po l it ic s o f Ch il dh o o d prospectively confers moral significance to the yet-to-be transformed’ (Lomasky 1987, 157), then under this basis the rights of the child become as significant as the rights of the adult, and indeed the legitimacy of the label ‘child’ comes under question. In many ways this is in keeping with debate, in industrialized societies in particular, regarding the ‘disappearance’ of childhood, with many writers pointing to the increasing similarity that appears to exist between the lifeworlds of adults and of children (Postman 1982; Hengst 1987). This is seen as being either as a result of the increasing rationalization in the organization of the work of both adults and children, such that school has become indistinguishable from the workplace (Qvortrup 2000); or as the result of the existence of a children’s consumer culture that increasingly replicates that of adults (Oldman 1994, 45). It also stems from concerns over the impact of new technologies on children’s lives as those same children forced to remain at home over fears for their safety in the public domain are now the subject of concerns over their participation in a private online world where they may once again be put in jeopardy. Child participation in this online world may be even more significant than this, however, in that not only can use of the Internet open a child to the threatening behaviour of adults (and, it must be said, other children), but it also gives children opportunities for enfranchisement that they would find difficult to achieve in the public domain. Online, children can state their political opinions, whether through comment or online votes, join pressure groups and politically debate in ways that they would be unable to through the normal course of public political action. In reality we have no real idea as to the extent to which children participate in this way, but by doing so they are able to ‘use the Internet as a transnational public sphere’, and so may potentially already be contributing to the invention of ‘new forms of citizenship, community and political practices’ (Bernal 2006, 161). This may be a form of existing political participation that governments have been slower to recognize, but others have been keen to exploit the desire for enfranchisement for negative political ends such that, for example, ‘much of the propaganda posted on … terrorist sites is focussed on Islamic youth’ (Wagner 2008, 22). Such sites are viewed by governments as exploitative, and they undoubtedly are, but they may also be an example of children’s enfranchisement that we are unwilling to recognize, and about which there remains little real knowledge, either in terms of its impact or its extent (Hinton 2008, 296). This issue of enfranchisement raises the much larger question of the citizenship of the child, and the implications that it might have for membership of a political community. In T.H. Marshall’s classic view, citizenship resulted from a collection of civil, political and social rights that, taken together, determine whether or not a particular individual may be recognized as a member of a political community. Such recognition, for Marshall, was fundamentally dependant upon the boundaries drawn up and regulated by the nation-state; boundaries that themselves resulted in patterns of inclusion and exclusion that critical citizenship theorists would argue create ‘differential opportunities for, and constraints upon, the exercise of agency’ (Lister 2003, 44).

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns In theoretical terms, the question of children and their citizenship is a significant one. If age is a reason to exclude ‘citizens’ from franchise, then questioning this could potentially have an impact on the rights and duties of all citizens within a given society (Ennew 2000), at the same time challenging the overarching assumptions that continue to exist regarding who is rational, or irrational, in citizenship terms. Yet the international community appears unready to truly examine the nature of citizenship as it pertains to the child (Bloomberg 2000). The EU is a case in point; as Atkinson notes: ‘Children are a constituency who are pan-European, but who are largely invisible in the public debate about Europe’ (1998, 2). If children are largely absent from public debate, it may be useful to consider the question of their rights within the context of the private domain, and in particular in terms of their relationships to others. This is in keeping with a shift now becoming apparent in the literature, ‘from children per se to children in relation to others’, including an increasing emphasis in the development literature ‘on rationality and the significance of relationships’ (Hinton 2008, 289). That the family is an important consideration in examining the rights of the child is obvious. Moreover, the role of the child as citizen is particularly important in the context of the economic significance of childhood, and especially the economic responsibilities of families in bringing up their children. The latter has an economic impact on society as a whole that may be significant, and therefore is often the focus of state policies of income maintenance. As Sgritta powerfully notes: Not to do so [that is, to recognise and compensate], as still happens in many countries, is the equivalent of relegating children to a position of inferiority; the equivalent of not considering children as a part of society with the right to participate in the conditions of life and well-being of the whole community; it means, after all, not considering the child as ‘citizen’ (1997, 393). Lomasky (1987, 165) has written of the significance of the family as the ‘the major protectors of children’, whilst the US stance on the UNCRC is informed by the notion of the primacy of the family, and in particular the role of the parents. The concern, particularly on the part of conservative Christian groups, is that the UNCRC in some way undermines parental rights and authority (Kilbourne 1999, 27), the implication being ‘that power rests either with children or with adults, as though it is a zero-sum game’ (Hinton 2008, 287). There is therefore a fundamental dichotomy at the heart of the UNCRC in that, whilst it advocates for the increased participation of the child, ‘international norms concerning the life of the family call on the state to protect the institution of the family and enshrine the rights of the privacy of the family. Both the duty to protect the family and privacy rights discourage direct state intervention in the life of the family’ (Sullivan 1995, 127). Thus the UNCRC effectively requires others – whether family members or NGOs – to ensure that the rights of the child are realized, thus begging the question: do children really have rights at all? Or is child participation actually a myth that has become, as Hart suggests, ‘a means, intended or otherwise, to produce compliant subjects of the state and producers/consumers within the global market. Thus, far 256

Ch il dr en’s Human Righ t s and t h e Po l it ic s o f Ch il dh o o d from promoting active citizenship capable of challenging inequities and social injustice, participation may be a means of co-option and silencing’ (2008, 410).

Conclusion The international system displays the evidence that children are the ‘“last minority” in the human rights movement’ (Margolin 1978, 441). As Human Rights Watch reports, the litany of abuses against children in August and September 2008 alone include the continued maintenance of the juvenile death penalty in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan and Yemen; the use of corporal punishment in schools in 21 US states; and the use, by all sides, of children in the conflict in Chhattisgarh state in central India. Abuses continue, in other words, despite the acceptance of the UNCRC and the rhetoric of policy-makers regarding the primacy of childhood. In reality, therefore, the way in which the UNCRC has been written, and the resulting vision of childhood that it promotes, may mean that in actuality those children whose lives most require the realization of their rights are those that are least able to achieve them. We assume that children need our protection until the age of 18, and theoretically they do. For the world’s elites this is the age ideally until which the majority of children are compulsorily scholarized, and hence under the protection of both the family and the state. What, however, of the rights of those children that it was hoped the UNCRC would really address – those children who have paid ‘the heaviest price for our shortsighted economic policies, our political blunders, our wars’ (Hammarberg 1990, 98)? For many such children, theirs is a childhood that has already been left behind, and that no amount of welfare programming or reintegration policies will ever be able to return to them. They have been thrust already into a situation where their childhood is over – whether this is a child of the North or a child of the South. For example, when a parent dies, even in peaceful circumstances, there is a feeling that childhood, at least as the child knows it, is over and that they will assume some of the responsibility of the dead parent or, at the very least, that their position within the family will alter. In war zones this is more than a feeling. A child may find himself as the head of the household, in charge of his siblings, in charge even of land, and thus in a situation where he needs to claim the rights he would have as an adult whilst he himself is still a child. The obvious answer – to offer the possibility of a more concrete acquisition of rights – is a difficult step for the international community to take, not least because many of those children who find themselves in such circumstances are perceived to be ‘risky’ children who live outside standard societal norms (Stephens 1995), and who therefore challenge the stereotype of the ‘innocent’ child. By the very nature of their experiences they have lived in ways that mean that their ‘innocence’, however we portray it, has gone, and they are seen as a threat to society as a result. Thus any additional power that is given to them is seen as handing power to a section of the community who cannot handle it, and who will threaten existing norms as a result. For this reason, 257

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns the job of realizing the rights of the child outwith the family unit has tended to fall to NGOs. Indeed, the UNCRC has arguably placed the child centre stage in the advocacy movement, witnessed by the vast array of NGOs that have children, if not as their primary focus, then at least as a significant element in their advocacy work. The question remains however, of how these often Western-based NGOs can actually change anything in terms of rights acquisition when they continue to work within frameworks that are prescriptive of a universal childhood norm. For these reasons what is needed in any examination of the notion of children and their human rights is a true understanding of what it means for society if we give children actual rights, and whether or not we are prepared to follow through on our promises to them. Realizing the full extent of the human rights of the child will ultimately give them the greatest protection, but doing so may leave us vulnerable in ways that we remain unprepared for.

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Ch il dr en’s Human Righ t s and t h e Po l it ic s o f Ch il dh o o d Hammarberg, T. (1990), ‘The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – And How to Make it Work’, Human Rights Quarterly 12:1, 97–100. Hart, J. (2008), ‘Children’s Participation and International D evelopment: Attending to the Political’, International Journal of Children’s Rights 16:3, 407–18. Hengst, H. (1987), ‘The Liquidation of Childhood: An Objective Tendency’, International Journal of Sociology 17:1, 58–80. Hinton, R. (2008), ‘Children’s Participation and Good Governance: Limitations of the Theoretical Literature’, International Journal of Children’s Rights 16:3, 285– 300. Hughes, J. (1989), ‘Thinking about Children’, in Scarre, G. (ed.), Children, Parents and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Ignatieff, M. (2001), Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Kaldor, M. (2006), New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity). Kilbourne, S. (1999), ‘Placing the Convention on the Rights of the Child in an American Context’, Human Rights Magazine 28:2, 27–31. Lee, N. (2001), Childhood and Society: Growing Up in an Age of Uncertainty (London: Open University Press). Leonard R., and Keenahan, D . (eds) (2004), A Fair Go: Some Issues of Social Justice in Australia (Eugene, OR: Common Ground Press). Lister, R. (2003), Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives (London: Macmillan). Lomasky, L. (1987), Persons, Rights and the Moral Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Lutz, H. (1997), ‘The Limits of European-ness: Immigrant Women in Fortress Europe’, Feminist Review 57:1, 93–111. Margolin, C.R. (1978), ‘Salvation versus Liberation: The Movement for Children’s Rights in a Historical Context’, Social Problems 25: 4, 441–52. Oldman, D . (1994), ‘Adult-Child Relations as Class Relations’, in Qvortup, J., Bardy, M., Sgritta, G., and Winterberger. H. (eds), Childhood Matters: Social Theory, Practice and Policy (Aldershot: Avebury). O’Neill, O. (1988), ‘Children’s Rights and Children’s Lives’, Ethics 98:3, 445–63. Postman, N. (1982), The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Vintage). Prout, A. (2005), The Future of Childhood: Towards the Interdisciplinary Study of Children (New York: Routledge). Qvortrup, J. (1985), ‘Placing Children in the D ivision of Labour’, in Close, P., and Collins, R. (eds), Family and Economy in Modern Society (London: Macmillan). — (2000), ‘D oes Children’s School Work have a Value? Colonisation of Children through their School Work’, Papers for International Conference on Rethinking Childhood: Working Children’s Challenge to the Social Sciences (Marseilles: Institut de Recherche pour le D evelopment), 2, 3–11. Roche, J. (1999), ‘Children: Rights Participation and Citizenship’, Childhood 6:4, 475–93. Sgritta, G. (1997), ‘Inconsistencies, Childhood on the Economic and Political Agenda’, Childhood 4:4, 375–404. 259

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Smith, L. (1998), The Politics of Focus: Women, Children and Nineteenth-Century Photography (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Stephens, S. (1995), Children and the Politics of Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Sullivan, D . (1995), ‘The Public/Private D istinction in International Human Rights Law’, in Peters, J., and Wolper, A. (eds), Women’s Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives (New York: Routledge). Summers, D . (1995), ‘A Modern Child’s Home Appears to be its Refuge’, Financial Times, 25 April. Wagner, A. (2008), ‘Terrorism and the Internet: Use and Abuse’, in Last, M., and Kanderl, A. (eds), Fighting Terror in Cyberspace (London: World Scientific). Wyness, M. (2000), Contesting Childhood (New York: Routledge). Zelizer, V. (1987), Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).

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16 Human Rights and D emocracy Paul Voice

The Universal D eclaration of Human Rights sets out an ambitious, controversial and often ignored set of rights that are meant to apply to signatory states. While there is disagreement about the meaning and interpretation of the D eclaration there is widespread agreement in the West about the fundamental nature of these rights and their applicability to all persons regardless of nationality. Furthermore, even among states that do not subscribe to the D eclaration or that resist its hegemony there is the apparent need to defend against and explain away allegations of human rights abuses. While the hegemony of human rights as a standard against which to judge to the behavior and legitimacy of states (and transnational organisations and corporations) is well established, more recently the idea of democracy as a universal standard of state government (and even global government) has been asserted. This chapter asks: in what way, if any, are human rights and democracy connected? To ask this question is to invite a great deal of philosophical difficulty. Human rights and democracy are contested concepts both in their content (what they mean) and in their scope (what areas of political, social and economic life they apply to). Therefore, our response to the question will depend, in part, on what we understand by both democracy and human rights. Below I identify three ways democracy and human rights can stand in relation to one another. In recent years the question of democracy and human rights has received particular attention because of the fall of communism and the spread of democratic institutions to previously autocratic states. One reason for this urgency is the assumption that democratic institutions are required for the protection of human rights and given that human rights are, by their nature, universal, then it follows that democratic institutions must also be universal (although not necessarily global democratic institutions). This argument can be supported by either making the empirical claim that human rights have historically been best protected and extended in states with democratic institutions, or by making the normative claim that democratic institutions ought to be extended because they are necessary for the realisation of the goods that human rights protect and foster. Often the empirical and the normative argument are made in tandem. However, there is an alternative argument that claims that some essential human rights can be respected and upheld in states without democratic institutions. While

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns such states do not secure the full range of rights typically protected in a democratic state they do nonetheless respect some subset of rights regarded as ‘basic’. While this argument is not necessarily in opposition to the more radical claim of universal democracy, it does allow that human rights can be disconnected from democratic institutions. Furthermore, it argues that some values such as the toleration of cultural difference, for example, can trump some human rights, although not the ‘basic’ ones. A third set of arguments engage with issues of globalisation. Here it is argued that global rather than state-bound democratic institutions are required to ground human rights. More particularly, it is claimed that there is a conceptual fit between the universal scope of human rights and the argument for global democracy. In the absence of global institutions that are capable of effectively enforcing people’s human rights the claim that global democracy is required for effective human rights protection is conceptual and speculative. These are all arguments that seek to assert and then explain the connection between human rights and democracy. However, there are some familiar arguments that understand human rights as protections for individuals against democratic institutions. The so called ‘tyranny of the majority’ was viewed by liberal philosophers like John Stuart Mill as a danger to individual liberties. Rights were seen as setting a limit to what states could compel citizens to do thereby securing the fundamental liberties of its citizens against the transgressions of democratic state power. This argument asserts a conceptual disunity between human rights and democracy and is grounds for the claim that while democratic institutions are compatible with the protection of human rights they can also be a danger to them. Typically a constitutional democracy enshrines certain rights precisely to protect them from the vagaries of democratic politics. So in all we have three main arguments to consider. The first is one that claims that democratic institutions are a normative requirement for human rights, the second that ‘basic’ human rights can be respected in the absence of human rights and the third that universal human rights require global democratic institutions.

Human Rights Require Democratic Institutions In one sense the claim that human rights require democratic institutions is obviously false. Human rights can be and have been conceptualised independently of the existence of any democratic institutions. On the other hand, conceptualising and articulating universal human rights is not the same as setting the conditions under which such rights can be realised and made practical and effective. If we leave the question of their practicality entirely unaddressed, then human rights have no need of any institutional requirements, democratic or otherwise. However, it is fair to argue that human rights from their inception have always had the question of their practicality embedded in them. The very idea of a right brings forward the matter of its institutionalisation. Historically, human rights have been institutionalised in 262

Human Righ t s and Demo c r ac y what are commonly referred to as liberal democratic states. However, the idea of democracy extends much further than liberal democracy to include variants such as ‘aggregative’ or ‘elective’ democracy, ‘deliberative’ democracy and ‘radical’ democracy, among others. So our first approach should be to determine whether there is something about democracy as such that makes it a requirement for the realisation of human rights. Wesley Milner identifies four features of democratic regimes that suggest that ‘the more democratic a government, the more likely it is to guarantee basic human rights’ (2002, 83). The first feature is the fact that democracies value bargaining and compromise above coercion and so citizens of democracies tend to be exposed to and suffer less violence from those in power. These values protect citizens from abuses and thus their human rights are less likely to be abrogated. Secondly, democracies have institutionalised procedures that allow citizens to remove abusive leaders from power. This acts as a constraint on leaders and if the constraint fails to reign in abusive officials they can be replaced. Thirdly, the civil liberties that citizens enjoy in a democracy allow abuses of power and human rights violations to be publicised and therefore violators can be subject to legal consequences and, ultimately, to the democratic process. Finally, democracy is ‘better equipped’ to satisfy the basic needs of its citizens. This is important because the capacity to exercise one’s human rights requires access to some minimum level of resources and so the claim here is that democracies do a better job of providing their citizens with the resources needed to enjoy and exercise their human rights. We should be cautious though in reading too much into these features of democracy. There are very different claims lurking here that should be disentangled. First, the claims as they stand suggest at best an empirical correlation between democratic institutions and the protection of human rights. This is not the same claim as the necessity of democratic institutions for the realisation of human rights. Second, even if there is a correlation between democracy and the protection of human rights it does not follow that only democracy protects human rights since non-democratic societies may do a better job of protecting some human rights for some citizens. Third, it does not follow that all citizens in a democracy are equally protected in their human rights since cultural, racial or economically privileged majorities may command the political and economic institutions in a democracy at the cost of the human rights of minorities and the less powerful. Last, actual democratic regimes have different historical records with regard to the protection of human rights and it matters which democratic regime one is a citizen of when it comes to measuring the extent to which one’s human rights are protected. However, the correlation argument should not be lightly pushed aside and there is much evidence that the correlation stands up to scrutiny. Furthermore, while it may not be possible to determine in any final sense whether the correlation is causal (given the constraints of time and experimentation), the correlation is important to consider when thinking about the institutionalisation of human rights. Two alleged correlations are well known in the literature. The philosopher and economist Amartya Sen (1999, 178–84) has argued that there is overwhelming evidence that citizens of democratic societies do not suffer famines because 263

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns democratic institutions work to provide incentives to prevent and alleviate the conditions that make famines occur. This is true, Sen says, regardless of the level of wealth the democracy enjoys. It could be argued from this that citizens’ human rights are protected (for example, the right to food contained in Article 25.1 of the UD HR) because they are members of a democratic polity. Secondly, it is claimed that democratic states do not go to war with each other (although they do go to war with non-democratic states) and, as John Rawls says, the ‘absence of war between major established democracies is as close to anything we know to a simple empirical regularity in relations among societies’ (1999, 52–3). Clearly, if democracies are less likely to engage in conflict (among each other), then citizens’ basic human rights to security are more likely to be protected when societies are democratic rather than autocratic. In fact, peace itself has been argued for as a human right (see Hayden 2004) and if there is a link between peace and democratic regimes then this would be yet a further argument for democracy as a requirement for the realisation of human rights. While these two broad empirical correlations have stood up to scrutiny, further and more fine-grained empirical studies have complicated the picture. For example, D avenport and Armstrong (2004) have recently argued that below ‘a certain level’ of democratic institutionalisation democracy has no influence of the extent of human rights protection. Thus it matters not only whether one lives in a democracy but also whether one lives in a ‘full’ democracy because otherwise one’s human rights are in as much danger as if one lived in an autocracy. A second recent piece of research by Michael Ross (2006) argues that while democracies do a better job of helping the poor than most non-democracies they do not do a better than job than all non-democracies. This is so even though democracies spend more on education and health than non-democracies however ‘these benefits seem to accrue to middle- and upper-income groups’ (2006, 860). It should be kept in mind, though, that empirical research into these questions is made very difficult by the fluidity of, and disagreement about, the concepts of democracy and human rights (there is no uncontroversial way to define ‘democracy’, for example), the small stock of samples available and the relatively brief period of time modern democracies have existed in a human rights context. However, it is safe to say that there is a broad evidential basis for the claim that democracies, contingently or causally, promote and are protective of the human rights of individuals. Indeed, in international treaties and international law there is emerging a claim that individuals have a ‘right to democracy’ (see Mendez 2000). The kind of democracy that most often is associated with the protection of human rights is ‘liberal’ or ‘constitutional’ democracy. Liberal democracies typically guarantee either in law or through a constitution some set of rights that lie beyond the reach of ordinary democratic processes. These rights are usually claims to entitlements grounded in metaphysics of some kind – either theological or humanist. For example, to say that an individual has a ‘natural’ or ‘God-given’ right to some good is to claim that they have a right to this good just in virtue of their humanity and quite independently of any political process, democratic or otherwise. This has led some to argue that ‘the human rights work of most 264

Human Righ t s and Demo c r ac y contemporary “democracies” is rooted in substantive adjectives such as “liberal”’ (D onnelly 1999, 618). From this observation it might be argued that the conceptual connection between democracy and human rights is much weaker than supposed and that it is not democratic institutions that we should focus on when considering human rights but rather liberal or constitutional protections. Thus, human rights do not require democratic institutions. In this vein Jack D onnelly has argued that ‘talking about democracy’ can be a distraction from a focus on human rights. In fact, he says that the ‘attraction of the regimes we most admire arise from their commitment and contribution to human rights’ (1999, 631; see also 2003, 185–203). While D onnelly argues in favor of liberal democracies with welfare states, one could just as well conclude that there is no necessary conceptual connection between a particular set of institutions and the protection of human rights as long as there are the sorts of rights guarantees in place that liberal regimes typically provide. D onnelly’s approach decouples the conceptual link between human rights protection and democracy. However, this argument rests on a contestable premise, namely that human rights need guarantees to be fully realisable. One point to be made against D onnelly’s approach is to say that it is a myth that constitutions and entrenched bills of rights can be or ever are decoupled from the democratic process. While political devices such as the requirement of ‘super-majorities’ and various ‘checks and balances’ are often in place to protect constitutions from whimsical democratic parliamentary majorities, it is not true that constitutions are immune from the democratic process entirely. In the US, for example, it is the Supreme Court that ‘interprets’ the constitution but the judges who sit on the court are appointed by democratically elected officials. In the end, human rights cannot be safeguarded from the democratic process. At best, liberal democracies make rights less exposed to simple majoritarian politics but this is not the same as immunity. This prodemocracy position can be supplemented by a broader normative argument to the effect that rights should be much more subject to democratic politics. For example, Jeremy Waldron (1993; 1999) argues that rights should be subject to democratic review and that democratic rights (such as the right to participation in the political process) would be ‘lost’ if they were entrenched in a bill of rights. More broadly, he argues that neither rights nor democracy are conceptually prior. Overall, it is clear then that neither on conceptual nor on empirical grounds can the claim be made that human rights require democratic institutions. Once again though, this is not to say that democratic societies do not protect citizens’ human rights better, overall, than non-democratic societies and nor is it to say that democratic societies do not protect a greater range of human rights than nondemocratic societies; the evidence we have suggests most strongly that they do. However, from the point of view of political theory we should hesitate to leap too quickly to the virtues of democracy from the platform of human rights. In fact, it could well be argued that making the linkage too strongly makes autocratic regimes less likely to implement human rights reforms. Before moving on to the next section we should briefly consider non-liberal forms of democracy because clearly different versions of the democratic ideal will make the claim of the necessity of democratic institutions for the realisation of human 265

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns rights more or less plausible. One version is what is variously called ‘elective’ or ‘aggregative’ democracy. Here, democracy is viewed as a political procedure for aggregating voter preferences through regular elections. While this assumes political equality insofar as each citizen is entitled to vote and some form of fairness as each citizen’s vote is to count equally, this is the least plausible candidate for creating a linkage between human rights and democracy. Merely aggregating preferences fails to assure that individuals and minorities are protected in their rights against the aggregated wishes of majorities and the powerful. While the right to vote matters a great deal and is clearly important for the possibility of human rights protection, few, if any, political theorists would consider a merely elective democracy adequate for the safeguarding of human rights. It is, however, important to mention because while political theorists might eschew elective democracies, Western politicians often take elections as both the necessary and the sufficient condition for democratic legitimacy. This is why human rights activists are so often at odds with and critical of emerging and new democracies while Western governments support and affirm them. We have already examined liberal democracies and shown how they can protect a wide range of human rights through legal and constitutional guarantees. I want to mention one further democratic ideal that has gained considerable support in recent years, namely deliberative democracy. D eliberative democracy places maximum citizen participation in the political, social and economic process at the heart of a genuine democracy. Citizens are expected to be full and equal participants in all the decisions that affect their lives and not just in the restrictive spheres of electoral politics. The emphasis is on inclusive and deliberative procedures that legitimate the exercise of state power. Most advocates of deliberative democracy emphasise democratic inclusion over the question of rights and are critical of liberal democracy for narrowing the scope of what can be deliberated about and who may deliberate. In some sense the idea is that the goods that human rights protect and foster are taken care of in a system that is democratically inclusive. However, most advocates of deliberative democracy, such as Jürgen Habermas, reject the sharp conceptual distinction between democracy and human rights that the question asked in this section supposes. While liberal democracies are clearly protective of human rights, a deliberative democracy attempts to ‘transcend the human rights or democracy disjunction by reconciling the idea of human rights with the principle of popular sovereignty’ (2001, 772). Habermas and others argue that while ‘the law’ itself is subject to deliberation, the procedural norms of deliberative rationality apply to deliberation itself. However, it is not clear that much is gained by subjecting human rights to democratic deliberation while leaving the norms of deliberation themselves beyond the reach of democratic practices. Radical democrats such as Chantal Mouffe (2000) take the critique of liberal democracy even further and propose a political system in which everything is contestable. In such a democracy there no place for human rights understood as a constraint on the democratic process. This is an affirmation of democracy as a fundamentally agonistic and conflictual political practice in which citizens are conceptualised as ‘adversaries’. It thus stands as an argument against the liberal juridical approach that privileges rights over democracy. Indeed, one could argue 266

Human Righ t s and Demo c r ac y that the very notion of a right as a privileged claim is lost within the radical democracy scheme. Before moving on to the next section it is worth pausing to consider the challenge that human rights offer to all traditional conceptions of democracy. Several articles in the UD HR assert rights to social and economic goods (for instance, Articles 23, 24, 25 and 26 which assert rights to such goods as work, leisure, a particular standard of living and to education). Traditionally, democratic theory and in particular liberal democratic theory has made a very clear distinction between political and civil rights and social and economic rights. Since human rights as contained in the UD HR makes no such distinction a democracy that was fully aligned with the requirements of human rights would have to protect the social and economic wellbeing of its citizens as well their political and civil rights. D avid Beetham (1999) has argued that the only way citizenship can be fully equal within a democracy is to enforce citizens’ social and economic rights. He argues this on the grounds that social and economic inequality compromises political and economic rights. Thomas Pogge (2008) argues that the distinction between political and civil rights on the one hand and social and economic rights on the other cannot be sustained at the practical level. A defense of a political right, for example, may entail the enforcement of an economic right and the reverse will also be true depending on the pragmatic requirements of the situation. In summary, while it is disputable whether human rights require democracy it is clear that human rights discourse challenges democracies by roughing up the distinction between kinds of rights.

Human Rights without Democracy The argument that human rights protections are possible without democracy rests on three connected claims. First, human rights are primarily concerned with the well-being and flourishing of individuals and not with political systems. Furthermore, individuals are vulnerable when faced with political and economic systems of whatever sort and so a human rights perspective is incompatible with the idea of democracy as a primary normative commitment. For instance, a concern with aggregating preferences of citizens is distinct from a concern for protection and flourishing of particular individuals (whether or not they are citizens). Secondly, some rights such as cultural and group rights may be realised only in the absence of democratic equality between members of the group. Here, in contrast to the first point above, the emphasis is on a conflict between democratically empowered individuals and the rights of a group. Third, if we restrict or narrow the range of human rights that we take to be essential or basic then it is not obvious that only a democratic regime can satisfy the rights requirements of individuals; this will depend on the regime and the rights that are specified as basic. I will not spend any time on the first claim since this brings back to the surface the fundamental conflict between those who take democracy to be normatively prior to human rights and those who take the opposite view. We have already seen 267

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns how controversial and difficult it is to claim that human rights require democratic institutions and later we will question whether it makes sense to think of democracy and human rights as in conflict in this way when we examine the idea of human rights as the normative foundation of global democracy. But if there is a priority given to human rights then it makes sense to ask whether they can be realised in political systems other than democratic ones. There are two ways of thinking of human rights without democracy. The first is the claim that certain group rights within a democratic state can only be protected by allowing group rights to trump democratic norms when these conflict. The second is to argue that some nondemocratic states can protect and enforce a set of ‘basic human rights’. I will briefly look at each of these cases in turn. Membership of cultural and religious groups is regarded by some as a fundamental good. The sense of belonging and community that such membership offers is thought to be a foundational value in a fully human life. However, democratic values that emphasise individuality over group membership serve, it can be argued, to undermine the goods and values of belonging. If group rights are indeed full-blooded rights then clearly there is a conflict between democratic values and some important set of rights. For example, aboriginal groups are often dependent on special protections and privileges to maintain themselves as a cohesive group with a specific identity. For example, sometimes, historically and culturally, such groups have gendered systems of authority that would be destroyed by the imposition of democratic equality (see for example Benhabib 2002; D eveaux 2006). Clearly, if the survival of the group is valued and given the assumption that group survival is worthy of rights protection then there is an obvious conflict between democratic norms and rights norms. A number of questions arise at this point. The first is whether this is really a conflict between rights and democracy or between two types of right: one that protects individuals and one that protects groups. Thus it could be argued that hierarchical authority in cultural and religious organisations abrogates individual rights, such as the right to free expression, and so this instance is not therefore a genuine case of democracy versus rights. However, this is too quick since it suggests that democratic norms just are human rights norms and so rules out conflict between them by fiat. If we allow this argument then we would have to decide which type of rights (individual or group) trumps the other and it would be hard not to argue that group rights are subordinate to the rights of individuals. Particularly, it would be hard to argue that a right of exit from a cultural or religious group was not a fundamental individual right. If individual rights always trump group rights it is hard to see what the value is of a group right. Furthermore, if democratic norms of equality are considered nothing more than transcribed human rights then this further erodes the status of group rights. The only alternative is to insist that group rights do in fact trump the individual rights of group members (or at least some individual rights) and the norms of democratic equality. While it is true, of course, that democratic states can and often do protect citizens’ group memberships (through language policies, for example) and that these protections do not necessarily give rise to conflicts between the human rights claims and group rights claims, it is clear that in some cases, particularly in groups 268

Human Righ t s and Demo c r ac y that are hierarchical and in which power is distributed according to gender, group rights and democratic norms conflict. And so, if these rights are to be fully asserted they would need to be asserted at the expense of democratic norms of equality. Turning now to the second case in which human rights and democracy might be thought of as distinct, John Rawls has argued that non-democratic states that respect ‘basic’ human rights ought to be tolerated by liberal states. This view argues that there is a set of rights that are disconnected from the requirements of democratic citizenship and what he calls a ‘decent’ society is one that respects and enforces these rights even though its institutional structures are not democratic. The ‘basic’ human rights Rawls has in mind are rights to life, liberty, conscience, personal property and ‘natural justice’ (1999, 65). His interpretation of these rights is a weak one. For example, the basic right of liberty protects citizens of decent societies from slavery but does not entail robust rights of political participation. These rights are basic in the sense that they are ‘distinct from the constitutional rights of liberal democratic citizenship’ (ibid., 79). Rawls wants these rights to provide a guarantee of a minimum level of protection so that liberal societies are not required to intervene to aid oppressed and endangered citizens of decent societies. Citizens of decent societies are thus not oppressed but are also not fully free. A more controversial point is Rawls’s claim that basic human rights are not exclusively tied to a liberal comprehensive and democratic point of view. If this were the case, then demanding that decent societies honor basic human rights would be to impose liberal democracy on them and fail to respect their ideological difference. It would be to demand that they become liberal democratic societies. Rawls does not fully support his claim that basic human rights are ‘not parochial’. It is tempting to believe that if such an argument were worked out it would push Rawls further towards a cosmopolitan democratic position on international justice because it would have to invoke essential normative similarities between citizens of different states. On the other hand, from the point of view of liberal societies, it is difficult to see how toleration could be extended to any societies that did not honor some basic level of human rights. The tension within Rawls’s liberalism (and liberalism as a whole) is evident between a normative universalism (as apparent in robust theories of universal human rights) and the demand for respect and toleration of differences. Whatever the intricacies of Rawls’s position the idea here is that democratic values, particularly the idea of full and equal participation in the political institutions of one’s society, are particular to certain Western societies and that there is a subset of human rights that is not parochial in this way. It is therefore possible on this view to have human rights without democracy. There at least two advantages to this position. First, it addresses the claim of those societies which have no history of democratic institutions that the demand for such institutions is a partisan imposition of sectarian values and yet still holds them to some standard of international justice. Second, it allows democratic states to distinguish between what Rawls calls ‘outlaw’ states that have no regard for the rights of their citizens and states that, while not democratic, nonetheless have ‘common good conception of justice’. This distinction determines the grounds for tolerating culturally and 269

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns historically different non-democratic but rights-respecting states. However, the obverse of these advantages is the controversial claim that some rights are not properly human rights at all and we are invited to ask what makes a right basic in the required sense? It is difficult from Rawls’s work to identify a principled criterion of distinction rather than a pragmatic distinction aimed at providing grounds for tolerating difference. Cosmopolitans (for example Pogge 1992; Beitz 2000) argue that human rights have universal application and reject the idea that decent societies should be exempt from the full range of human rights. What troubles cosmopolitans is that decent societies can deny their citizens rights of free expression and association and rights of political participation and yet still comply with Rawls’s list of basic human rights. In short, as long as a decent society refrains from the grossest abrogation of a citizen’s rights then liberal societies ought to both tolerate and respect such a society. D ecent societies have a common good idea of justice. Therefore, such a society does attend to the interests of at least most of its citizens. However, as critics point out, the idea of the common good is compatible with intolerance towards minorities in decent societies. Indeed, it is compatible with a lack of toleration towards a minority of citizens who have and advocate democratic values. It seems odd then that liberal peoples should tolerate and respect societies that do not tolerate their own citizens who profess the liberal value of toleration. Therefore, Rawls’s use of human rights merely as a boundary, demarcating types of societies, fails to capture what cosmopolitans think of as important about human rights, namely the protection they afford to the well-being and dignity of individuals regardless of the society they live in. Regardless of the cosmopolitan critique of Rawls some human rights advocates such as D onnelly (1999) and Held (2005) have argued for a clear conceptual distinction between human rights and democracy, arguing that the focus should be on ‘rights-protective regimes’ rather than on whether a particular state is a democracy or not. This line of argument supposes with Rawls that human rights can be protected by non-democratic regimes and that democratic norms and human rights requirements are not coincident.

Global Democracy and Human Rights Human rights have a universal application, of course; this is what makes them human rights. D emocracy on the other hand has been a form of government institutionalised within nation-states. Thus the scope of human rights and the scope of democratic governance have been very different. Indeed, some the difficulties of implementing a regime of human rights have been based in the claim of sovereign democratic states to decide their own affairs regardless of the claims of human rights organisations (for instance, the continued practice of capital punishment in the US). However, there are two forces at work that undermine the sharp difference

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Human Righ t s and Demo c r ac y in scope between human rights and democracy. The first is historical and the second conceptual. Recent decades have seen the globalisation of economic and political institutions. The former is much more pronounced for the moment but the latter is proceeding with increasing pace as well. The global economic crisis of 2008 is evidence enough of the deeply intertwined world economy, and the construction and expansion of regional political entities such as the European Union and the formation of transnational institutions such as the International Criminal Court are evidence of political globalisation. The consequence of these historical shifts away from the sovereign power of nation-states is to expand the political terrain on which people act and, more importantly, are acted on. In this regard Richard Falk has argued that ‘the construction of global democracy is a direct response to globalization’ (2002, 72). The idea of a global or cosmopolitan democracy is suited to a world in which people’s lives are affected by decisions made well beyond the borders of their nation-state. If political decisions are legitimate to the extent that those who are affected by such decisions are full and equal participants in the process, then democratic legitimacy requires transnational political institutions. Falk goes on to argue that the normative dimension of such institutions ought to be understood from the point of view of ‘mainstream human rights discourse’. If global democratic institutions are guided by the imperatives of human rights, then, he argues, Article 28 of the UD HR requires a radical change in the international order since the Article asserts that ‘Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this D eclaration can be fully realized’. What this would require is a move towards a global civil society and contrasts sharply with ‘neoliberal’ globalisation which globalises economic institutions but restricts democratic participation. Falk thus sees human rights as the justification for and providing the moral content of a global democracy that matches the historical fact of economic globalisation. Michael Goodhart has argued that what is required to articulate the idea of a global democracy is a new conception of democracy that is distinct from the traditions of republican and liberal thought. This he calls democracy as human rights (D HR). He says: ‘D HR defines democracy as the political commitment to universal emancipation through securing the equal enjoyment of fundamental human rights for everyone’ (2005, 135). He claims that the universal logic of human rights and the ideas of sovereignty conflict and, further, that ‘sovereign democracy’ is in conflict with the process of globalisation and cannot survive it. Goodhart calls this new idea of democracy ‘emancipatory’ democracy and he combines the democratic republican ideas of non-domination with liberal democratic ideas of non-perfectionism and equality. These foundational democratic values are articulated in the language of universal human rights that seek to emancipate people from political, social and economic domination. As with Falk’s ideas discussed above, the notion of a global democracy is given its normative character by drawing on human rights which, by their nature, are already global in their scope of application. This alignment of global democracy and human rights which both Falk and Goodhart advocate invites us to question whether the tensions between democracy 271

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns and human rights that we have already noted and examined apply here too. Sovereign democracies are not always the best custodians of human rights so why should we believe that a global democracy would be better at protecting human rights? In fact, there might be reason to suspect it would be worse. A consideration in support of this latter remark is that where sovereign democracies fail in their human rights duties there are other sovereign democracies and transnational institutions to point out these failures and pressurise the regime to honor its human rights commitments. One might suspect that in a global democracy in which institutions are globally integrated that the locations for dissent would be narrowed. Although Goodhart attempts to define democracy as human rights, thereby collapsing democratic norms into human rights norms, it is clear that the tension between democracy and human rights cannot be entirely erased. For instance, he argues that global democratic governance would not necessarily consist of majoritarian representative institutions. Instead, global governance would be aimed at ‘creating secure institutional guarantees for human rights’ (2005, 150). Perhaps, then, Goodhart’s D HR theory is in essence the subordination of democratic norms to human rights norms so that global democratic institutions are in the service of human rights requirements. Falk’s argument can also be read as taking human rights as the superior normative framework and regarding global democracy as an institutional response to the normative scope of human rights. One avenue of resistance to universal human rights and the globalisation of democratic forms of government is the claim that human rights and democratic norms are sectarian and partisan values that are imposed by the West on peoples and cultures that have different value systems. So called ‘Asian exceptionalism’, the political and social status of women and practices such as genital mutilation, have all been challenged by both human rights and democracy advocates (see Beitz 2000). The denial of political rights of participation, the subordination of women and the unchosen violation of bodily integrity are all clear cases of the abrogation of human rights. However, the spread of democracy to non-Western states has resulted in situations where regimes hostile to the some human rights provisions (especially regarding the status of women) have been democratically elected. Therefore, it is not obvious that the spread of democracy goes hand in hand with the spread of rights-protecting societies. One could argue that democracy, broadly understood, is more accommodating to non-Western values than the human rights requirements of a document such as UD HR. However, many democrats would simply deny that ‘democracies’ that failed to robustly ensure democratic equality were genuine democracies and would claim that they were merely ‘elective’ democracies. This move brings democracy and universal human rights back into alignment and invites the charge once again of the partisan Western character of both human rights and democracy.

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Conclusion There are a number of challenges for theorists of human rights and democracy. First, for those who wish to argue for the coincidence of the requirements of democracy and human rights, arguments will have to be produced to show that the normative scope of these two bodies of political and normative theory can be aligned. Is a fully democratic state also a state fully compliant with the demands of international rights? The second challenge emerges from the first. If the demands of human rights and democracy do line up in this fashion, is it possible to defend human rights and democracy from accusations that they are intolerant of cultural, historical and national difference? And do these differences matter? Third, if toleration of such differences is important, is it plausible to separate rights of political participation and the corresponding democratic norms from the so-called basic rights? Can the latter be genuinely realised without the former?

References Beetham, D . (1999), Human Rights and Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press). Beitz, C.R. (2000), ‘Rawls’s Law of Peoples’, Ethics 110:4, 669–96. — (2001), ‘Human Rights as a Common Concern’, American Political Science Review 95:2, 269–82. Benhabib, S. (2002), The Claims of Culture: Equality and Diversity in the Global Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Brysk, A. (ed.) (2002), Globalization and Human Rights (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Chambers, S.A. (2004), ‘Giving Up (on) Rights? The Future of Rights and the Project of Radical D emocracy’, American Journal of Political Science 48:2, 185–200. D avenport, C., and Armstrong, D .A. (2004), ‘D emocracy and the Violation of Human Rights: A Statistical Analysis from 1976 and 1996’, American Journal of Political Science 48:3, 538–54. D eveaux, M. (2006), Gender and Justice in Multicultural Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press). D onnelly, J. (1999), ‘Human Rights, D emocracy, and D evelopment’, Human Rights Quarterly 21:3, 608–32. — (2003), Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Falk, R. (1981), Human Rights and State Sovereignty (Teaneck, NJ: Holmes and Meier). — (2002), ‘Interpreting the Interaction of Global Markets and Human Rights’, in Brysk (ed.). Frey, B.S., and Groette, L. (1998), ‘D oes The Popular Vote D estroy Civil Rights?’, American Journal of Political Science 42:4, 1343–8.

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Frost, M. (2002), Constituting Human Rights: Global Civil Society and the Society of Democratic States (New York: Routledge). Goodhart, M. (2005), Democracy and Human Rights (New York: Routledge). Gould, C. (2004), Globalizing Democracy and Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Habermas, J. (1998), Between Facts and Norms (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). — (2001), ‘Constitutional D emocracy: A Paradoxical Union of Contradictory Principles’, Political Theory 29:6, 766–81. Halperin, M.H. (2000), ‘D emocracy and Human Rights: An Argument for Convergence’, in Power and Allison (eds). Hayden, P. (2004), ‘Constraining War: Human Security and the Human Right to Peace’, Human Rights Review 6:1, 35–55. Held, D . (2005), ‘Globalization, Corporate Practice, and Cosmopolitan Social Standards’, in Kuper (ed.). Isaac, J.C. (1996), ‘A New Guarantee on Earth: Hannah Arendt on Human D ignity and the Politics of Human Rights’, American Political Science Review 90:1, 61–73. Koh, H.H., and Slye, R.C (eds) (1999), Deliberative Democracy and Human Rights (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Kuper, A. (ed.) (2005), Global Responsibilities: Who Must Deliver on Human Rights? (New York: Routledge). Mendez, J.E. (2000), ‘The Inter-American System of Protection: Its Contribution to the International Law of Human Rights’, in Power and Allison (eds). Milner, W. (2002), ‘Emerging Human Rights Challenges: The Effects of Globalization and Economic Liberalization’, in Brysk (ed.). Mouffe, C. (2000), The Democratic Paradox (London: Verso). Pogge, T. (1992), ‘Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty’, Ethics 103:1, 48–75. — (2008), World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press). Power, S., and Allison, G. (eds) (2000), Realizing Human Rights (New York: St Martin’s Press). Rawls, J. (1999), The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Ross, M. (2006), ‘Is D emocracy Good for the Poor?’, American Journal of Political Science 50:4, 860–74. Sen, A. (1999), Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor Books). Waldron, J. (1993), ‘A Rights-Based Critique of Constitutional Rights’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 13:1, 18–51. — (1999), ‘D eliberation, D isagreement and Voting’, in Koh and Slye (eds).

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17 Transitional Justice: From the Local to the International Elizabeth Stanley

Over the last two decades international understandings of war crimes or crimes against humanity have consolidated around the notion that such events affect all humankind and therefore demand an international response – as the preamble to the International Criminal Court notes, ‘such grave crimes threaten the peace, security and well-being of the world’ (Cryer 2005, 277). The development of political, ideological and legal structures of human rights now mean that ‘doing nothing’ about repression is no longer an option for either international or domestic actors (Lutz 2006). Against this backdrop, international interventions to end conflict or gross human rights violations have become widespread and diverse: international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), like Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, work to monitor and shame violating regimes; financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, increasingly place human rights conditions on loans; and powerful states can cease to support repressive governments, pressure them to negotiate through economic ‘sticks’ or ‘carrots’ or, in some cases, engage in direct military strikes on the basis of stopping violence (Sriram 2004). External arbiters have, then, played a significant role in encouraging human rights and peaceful conditions – albeit sometimes in a contradictory, ad hoc or seemingly irrational way. Similarly, in the wake of repression, internationals have become crucial actors in the development of truth and justice initiatives. Transitional justice norms and practices have diffused rapidly across the world. This global ‘justice cascade’ (Lutz and Sikkink, cited in Sikkink and Walling 2006, 301) can be charted in the exponential rise of measures such as prosecutions, truth-telling, reparations, memorials, apologies or lustration (removing ‘guilty’ individuals from public office) in transitional states, sometimes years after violations had taken place (Teitel 2000). Since the 1970s, there have been over 35 truth commissions and almost 40 international courts and tribunals, including the International Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia, the ‘hybrid trials’ for Timor-Leste, Kosovo and Sierra Leone and ‘foreign trials’ such as

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns the Pinochet case as well as the many cases continuing from World War II (Sikkink and Walling 2006). Such responses have engaged international actors and traversed national boundaries. Further, the global transfer of knowledge, policy and practice regarding transitional justice has become increasingly common (Hayner, 2001); so much so that there is now an emerging ‘standardization of transitional justice goals and methods’ (Lutz 2006, 333). Increasingly, transitional justice initiatives have also been wrapped up with broader international involvements in state-building processes. Over the last decade, international state-building measures – from peacekeeping operations to humanitarian assistance to the formation and governance of state institutions – have been deemed necessary to protect populations from gross human rights abuses but also to maintain local, and thereby international, stability in states that ‘are too weak to police their borders and enforce the rule of law’ (Chandler 2006, 476). Since 9/11, in particular, the identification of ‘failed states’, ‘weak states’, ‘fragile states’ or even ‘Low Income Countries Under Stress’ has revolved around the idea that such areas are ‘breeding grounds’ for terrorism and will become enclaves for ‘dissidence’ (Abraham and Van Schendel 2005; Charlesworth 2007). Thus, international interventions have been generally underpinned by pragmatic decisions regarding the perceived security of external others, and transitional justice practices have commonly become part of a longer list of ‘tickboxes’ to attain peace and security. In this context, internationals may provoke justice but they may also ‘be more willing to make compromises about justice’ (Sriram 2004, 24) to fulfill other economic, strategic or political motives. In the light of these advances, this chapter assesses the role of international actors in the success, or otherwise, of transitional justice mechanisms (particularly truth commissions and court processes) after conflict. To this end, the chapter examines three main themes: (1) how internationals have engaged with local populations in transitional states; (2) how the involvement of international actors/structures in violations has been exposed or hidden through transitional justice processes; and, (3) how internationals have connected with opportunities for social justice in the midst of transition. It must be clarified that this chapter does not seek to minimize the responsibility of local people, social conditions or structures for the development and practice of transitional justice. The advances of transitional justice are undoubtedly connected to the involvement of local non-governmental organizations, victims’ groups, church organizations, politicians, legal personnel as well as many other domestic actors; and most transitional justice literature focuses on these groups. Yet, as inferred above, internationals have developed a central position in funding, establishing and running truth and justice bodies. It is this international participation that this chapter seeks to examine. Finally, although this chapter frequently refers to ‘internationals’, there are boundaries to this terminology. Unless stated otherwise, ‘internationals’ refers to those working within the United Nations, international financial institutions or official members of external governments. The term refers, then, to those representatives of mainstream international institutions. These groups do not, of 276

Tr ansit io nal Just ic e course, work in unison. Such international workers will often work against each other – while alleged perpetrators may be pursued for arrest and prosecution by certain UN workers, they may also enjoy support and protection from external governments; similarly, workers within the same institution can work in contradictory ways. In addition, it is clear that some internationals, and their traditions, will have more power than others. ‘Global North’ states, as well as Western notions of justice and accountability, continue to have significant sway on transitional states. Given these dimensions, wherever possible, the chapter will highlight the role of particular actors within specific transitional sites.

International Collaboration, Indifference or Dominance All transitional states have networks of individuals and groups working towards human rights goals. In some states, such as Argentina, human rights groups are highly organized, politically shrewd and have retained their commitment to justice over numerous years. Such civil society groups have pursued transitional justice by building coalition strategies with international human rights networks. For instance, over many years, Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo have, among other actions, campaigned to find and seek justice for the children of the disappeared, many of whom were taken and later adopted by military couples. To this end, the Madres successfully lobbied the drafters of the Convention on the Rights of the Child to include provisions on the ‘right to identity’. Once ratified, they argued that children had a right to know their identity and therefore Argentinian judges could legally order blood tests to establish parenthood. Finally, they used international allies to campaign for the arrest and conviction of former ‘President’ General Videla on charges of kidnapping children (Sikkink and Walling 2006). Thus, the Madres focused on local cases but engaged with ‘foreign, international, and regional institutions as a complement and/or back-up to their domestic work’ (ibid., 320). Similarly, using the information collated by local activists, Spanish-based lawyers issued international arrest warrants against 98 Argentinian officers on the grounds of terrorism and genocide. These warrants ultimately led to the arrest of top level military officials within Argentina (ibid.). These judicial advances, like that relating to General Pinochet, highlight the profound potential of effective coalitions between local and international workers to pursue transitional justice. Indeed, international assistance – including economic, diplomatic, legal or strategic support – can be critical to the success of 

Although we might approach workers within institutions like the United Nations or, say, the International Monetary Fund as individuals capable of diverse action, it is also clear that such bodies have ‘developed their own internal cultures, discourses, rationalizations, and futures’ that undermine diversity (Mackenzie, 2006:167). Individuals joining these institutions are likely to perpetuate dominant policies and practices, particularly if they wish to secure career progression. 277

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns local transitional justice institutions. International funding is often vital to their implementation, particularly when countries have further responsibilities in building or rebuilding local infrastructure. External funding can enable transitional justice workers to have some element of independence from government workers or other local pressure groups (Cassel 1995). Moreover, coalition support can ensure that local workers are exposed to the accumulated international knowledge on transitional justice – those who have engaged in comparative problems elsewhere are able to exchange ideas and enthusiasm with those tasked with dealing with the past (Hayner 2001). Of course, despite these collaborations, it is also evident that international actors can take decisions to avoid transitional justice initiatives because it does not fit with their own strategic or economic interests. D espite ‘grand statements to the contrary’, powerful outsiders can act with complete ‘indifference’ towards truth and justice bodies (Schabas 2006, 23). From Sierra Leone to Cambodia, internationals have failed to provide adequate funds, staff or resources to ensure that transitional justice officials can undertake their work thoroughly, and in a manner consistent with standards of due process (Bhatia 2005; Stanley 2008, 95–6). For example, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone was initially budgeted at $10 million; following a poor donor response from UN members, it eventually received about $4 million while the related Special Court had funds scaled down from $100 million to about $56 million over three years (Schabas 2006). Similarly, in Timor-Leste, the UN and other powerful states (such as the UK, US and Australia) fell short in the provision of funds, good management or multilateral pressure on Indonesia. The end result has been judicial immunity for Indonesian perpetrators; meanwhile, human rights victims consistently argue that these ‘Global North’ actors have failed to fulfill their legal and moral obligations to see justice done (Stanley 2008, 106–7). Internationals can, then, distance themselves from local demands for justice, especially when these expensive provisions do not proffer economic, political or ideological returns. At the other extreme, however, internationals can become overtly involved in transitional measures, so much so that local groups become disengaged. In places where state institutions have been eroded or are non-existent, internationals can work as if they are ‘the experts’ in the field while locals are reduced to being mere observers (Patrick 2001). No more has this been apparent than in Iraq. Here, the decision by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to ‘go it alone’ in transitional justice measures (and, of course, with other aspects of invasion and state-building) led to the almost complete exclusion of local populations from truth and justice processes (Stover et al. 2006). The resulting programs that included measures of de-Ba’athification, that removed former Ba’ath members from position of authority, and criminal prosecutions ‘either backfired or were hopelessly flawed. The CPA never understood – or even listened to – the 

Of course, funds are not the only factor to ensure that justice will be done – as highlighted in the US$1.6 billion spent on the ICTY, a process that has so far completed 114 proceedings out of 161 indicted accused – yet it certainly helps. 278

Tr ansit io nal Just ic e people it was seeking to help’ (ibid., 249). Ultimately, the ‘expert’ decisions of the CPA destabilized Iraq further and created new tensions, including an increased sense of hostility towards the regime. The ‘over-participation’ of internationals can even feature in bodies designed to increase local involvement. For instance, in Timor-Leste, the hybrid ‘Special Panels for Serious Crimes’ that were established to involve local populations in the prosecution of serious human rights violators also operated in ways that facilitated exclusion. This hybrid court was established without ‘sufficient or meaningful consultation with the East Timorese’ people (Linton 2002, 106) and, for a long time, court workers failed to communicate at all with the local population – even with those human rights groups that had collated information about violations over many years. Outreach was dependent on one ‘Public Affairs’ staff member who had no resources for the job. In 2005, the D eputy General Prosecutor Carl D e Faria undertook 12 district meetings to explain the closure of the process. Here, there was widespread anger – many locals had not known that the serious crimes process even existed and here they were told that it was to close (D e Faria 2005). Such modes of working, reflecting short-term administrative priorities, underpinned local claims that internationals were more concerned with selling an image to the outside world and facilitating their own professional and political ambitions, rather than with addressing local needs (Pouligny 2006). In addition, they impacted on the legitimacy and support of not just this court process but also other international initiatives (Stanley 2008, 103). All too often, international workers are seen to inhibit collegial working through their domination of transitional justice measures. Western modes of working, together with short-term interventionist priorities, can undermine effective collaborations and lead to local antipathy towards transitional programs. Locals can feel increasingly squeezed out of new initiatives, especially when ‘one size fits all solutions’ are applied across historically diverse conditions (Mani 2002). For instance, the role of international organizations (like the New York-based International Center for Transitional Justice) in providing advice or training for those who wish to establish transitional justice bodies, has been critiqued on the basis that ‘these processes … are ones that become imposed, partly in the interests of the West to resolve conflict in a particular way, and without local and organic links to the particular society’ (Cunneen 2008, 6). Even local ventures can be undermined by the international norms that underpin them – thus, the genocide trials in Rwanda that have operated over the last decade have faced local challenge as a consequence of their basis ‘on a Western legal system inherited from Rwanda’s Belgian colonizers’ (Longman 2006, 209). For many Rwandans, these processes have been out of reach, ‘alienating’ and unconnected to local reconciliatory endeavours (ibid.). D espite international and local actors operating with the best of intentions, dominant Western notions of justice still undermined local feelings of ownership of, or inclusion in, this transitional mechanism. The ability of local people to participate in processes of truth and justice can, therefore, be undermined through deeper institutionalized conditions. Mainstream human rights institutions – from the UN to international courts to international 279

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns financial institutions – can operate in ways that are not neutral, and which entrench inequalities further. As Chinkin (1998, 120) details, these institutions often fail ‘to address’ economic, gendered or other structured ‘difference’ that ‘inhibit’ the ‘accomplishment’ of formal rights. For example, they will regularly undertake meetings and documentation in English or with technical jargon, activities that will invariably exclude speakers of other languages or those with limited education (Pouligny 2006). Similarly, notwithstanding recent progress, gender inequalities and difference can still be ignored by mainstream institutions as a result of: the majority male membership of institutions that implement or interpret rights; the exclusion of ‘women’s issues’ from negotiations, discussions or institutions; the limited attention to economic, social or cultural violations, or to violations that occur in private spaces; the failure to recognize that gender has a differential impact on violations, or a reticence to engage in investigations or court procedures in ways that are ‘female-friendly’ (Byrnes 1988; Franke 2006). The operations of transitional justice bodies can disregard those who are made structurally or socially vulnerable (Stanley 2008). The consequences of such frames, policies and practices are that certain victims can ‘remain unrecognised by broader political processes, and outside the sphere of full political and legal inclusion’ (Ní Aoláin 2006, 844). Moreover, without local participation, the legitimacy of these institutions is certainly brought into question (Stover et al. 2006). Local people are more likely to meet internationals with skepticism as they view them ‘as not really committed to their cause’ (Cohen 2001, 164). Instead, they are deemed to be focused on the consolidation of their careers, world view or power, these cosmopolitan elites ‘see what they want to see, then get the next plane home’ (ibid.) or, at worst, they use their involvement as part of a strategy of occupation (D innen 2004). In conclusion, the elite international capture of transitional justice challenges the legitimacy of institutions dealing with the past. Given that, in many transitional states, institutions of justice may be inadequate or even non-existent, a crucial issue relates to how local conflict resolution practices may dominate or be entwined with Western-style approaches to justice. That is, provisions of truth and justice should make sense to the communities in which they operate; ideally, they should emerge from the bottom up. To this end, internationals will need to think in ‘a more nuanced way’ about their own role as well as the nature of programs they pursue (Lutz 2006, 335).

Recognizing the International Basis of Violations A central aspect of the ‘justice’ in transitional justice mechanisms lies with their ability to provide recognition of who has been victimized by, and who has perpetrated, human rights violations. Recognition of events and identities offers an opportunity to ‘undo power’ (Breytenbach 1994) by rehumanizing victims, challenging the denials of repressive regimes or exposing the myths on which 280

Tr ansit io nal Just ic e violations came to be ignored. Truth commissions, in particular, have the potential to ‘dig deeper’ and provide a wider recognition of events, by showing how human rights violations are both caused by and maintained through a complex web of international, structural, institutional, social or personal decision-making (Crelinsten 2003). For example, the truth commission in El Salvador recognized that direct perpetrators as well as collusive bystanders (such as the judiciary) and international supporters (notably the US government) all contributed to systematic violations in that country (Kaye 1997). In the same way, the commission in Chad examined the foreign role in national abuses in some detail, and revealed that France, Egypt, Iraq, Zaire and especially the US were supporters and ‘supplier[s] of financial, military, and technical aid’ to the D irectorate of D ocumentation and Security that killed at least 40,000 individuals and detained and tortured thousands of others (Brody 2006, 283). Notwithstanding these examples, the recognition of outsiders as human rights violators remains limited, even within truth-telling processes. Generally, transitional justice bodies have failed to expose internationals that have been directly involved in, or provided crucial support for, violations. That is, transitional justice mechanisms tend to focus on human rights abuses as an internal problem, such that ‘the international community is absent from the scene of violence and suffering until it intervenes as a heroic savior’ (Orford 2006, 862). This stance inevitably ignores the role of internationals in creating the conditions that led to violence, conflict or unrest in the first place. Recognition is also hampered by the dominance of international norms, standards or definitions on what constitutes violation. D espite having suffered ‘horrible’ or ‘morally reprehensible’ events, many victims can find that they stand outside international legal definitions of crime (Mertus 2000, 150). The vocabulary of violation, the naming of harms, is established by international legal institutions and actors who generally live outside the world of suffering. Their omissions, or oversights, can mean that certain perpetrators or victims go completely unrecognized (Rosenblum 2002). It is only recently, for instance, that crimes such as rape or sexual slavery have been admitted to the categories of international crime. Likewise, whole categories of violence (in the form of economic, social or cultural violations) continue to be ignored within most transitional legal processes. The legal hierarchy that prioritizes civil and political violations has stifled recognition of the diverse forms of violence suffered by vulnerable groups and certainly shifts attention away from those international networks that sustain global poverty. Related to this, the tendencies of both criminal justice and truth commission processes to focus on individuals can hinder a complex recognition of who was involved in violations. While an individualizing approach is useful, in that it can show that particular people were directly responsible for violations or that 

Schabas (2006) argues that commissions should be careful in balancing the responsibility for violations between internationals and local people. In a discussion on Sierra Leone, he proposes that an analysis that focuses on external causes can exonerate local people ‘from responsibility and at the same time [leave] them helpless to change things (ibid. 28). 281

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns specific people were victimized, it also propagates a discourse that emphasizes ‘evil’ individuals or aberrant policies as being at the heart of violations (Galtung 1994). Individualism hides the social, political and economic structures in which violations take place and the causes of violations are regarded as exceptional deviations from ‘normal’ state behaviour or from ‘normal’ international relations (Orford 2006). As Evans (1998, 16–17) details, these practices are ‘convenient for those who most benefit’ from existing structures. Unindicted perpetrators, their supporters and bystanders may all be relieved of responsibility for their specific involvement in violations (Fletcher and Weinstein 2002). As a result, individualism loses the opportunity to learn lessons about international levels of complicity in violations; it can sustain denials and myths of innocence; and, it can mean that the underlying causes of crime go unaddressed (Orford 2006). Transitional justice measures have, therefore, been challenged on the basis that they do not give sufficient weight to the issues of structural violence or systemic forms of violence. For example, in a study of the coffee industry, Nevins (2003) shows that the Timorese Truth Commission did not recognize the structural systems that still underpin human rights violations for a significant section of the population. The profits from coffee-growing, which dominates the local economy in TimorLeste, have been subject to dramatic fluctuations since the Indonesian military placed farmers under the International Coffee Accord system. Since this time, farmers have faced fierce competition from across the globe and decreased coffee income has resulted in increased malnutrition, preventable disease deaths and a decline in ‘primary school enrolment because families cannot afford the modest school fees’ (ibid., 694). However, this kind of continuing ‘violence’, which results from a global political-economic system, has not been illustrated or challenged by the Commission. The Commission’s focus on individual acts of violence (that is, who did what, when, to whom and why), paid little attention to the conditions that will perpetuate injustices and potentially create further violence in the future. Transitional justice bodies have similarly failed to address how support for violations has crossed nation-state boundaries in complex ways. For instance, Nattrass (1999) illustrates how the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission argued that all businesses operating within South Africa were morally culpable for apartheid and should each therefore contribute to a blanket tax. In doing so, the Commission glossed over the divergence between businesses and the direct involvement of some companies (such as Anglo-American Corporation that is majority-owned by UK institutions) in repressive policies, particularly through dismal health and safety protections and the suppression of trade unions, was placed into the ‘same camp’ as ‘corner-café owners’ (ibid., 390). This position by the Commission undermined a more subtle analysis of how apartheid was maintained at an international level and it also effectively took the heat off external powerful players (ibid.). It allowed internationals to disengage from testimonies of violations and to distance themselves from the causes of violence. In sum, transitional justice bodies are regularly implemented and managed in ways that hide or minimize the international basis of violations. These limits of recognition perpetuate perceptions that violations are linked to ad hoc, aberrant 282

Tr ansit io nal Just ic e individuals or small units, and not connected to everyday systems of global economy and trade, or to international structures of dominance (Galtung 1994). Invariably, these limits also narrow the scope of opportunities for redress.

From Transitional Justice to Social Justice In her analysis of justice, Nancy Fraser (2005) argues that claims for justice must be viewed along three lines – recognition, the ability of individuals to participate in democratic structures, and social status. For her, any individual’s claims for justice must be connected to measures to overcome subordination or to establish that person as a full partner in social life (ibid). Within a transitional context, being recognized as a victim or being able to participate in one-off institutional programs is not enough (Stanley 2008). While establishing the truth of events is important, victims also require some form of social change in their lives. In this way, transitional justice initiatives also bring ‘a responsibility to those whose testimony is solicited and whose speech or silence may make … claims’, unanticipated or otherwise (Orford 2006, 855). The possibilities of claims for redistribution are wide in their scope and regularly require a long-term commitment. Individual victims of human rights violations may need medical or psychological support, or request assistance to gain education or employment. Similarly, former combatants who wish to participate in programs of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration may also require counselling, employment opportunities or new skills training. In many circumstances, victims and activists will also demand compensation or state initiatives to acknowledge repression (for example, through official apologies, memorials or by rewriting educational curricula). Local groups can also request that justice is served towards individual perpetrators and their institutions – through prosecutions, lustration or by reorganising institutions so that they operate along human rights principles. Victims can also demand broader socioeconomic changes, such as resolving injustices through land redistribution, or challenging sexist or racist practices within state institutions. Thus, as Farmer (2003) proposes, justice entails standing firm on fundamental human rights and about learning to change the world in ways that transform structural inequalities, institutional shortcomings and interpersonal relations. None of this is easy, particularly given the status of many contemporary transitional states. The most recent examples of countries emerging from a violent past – such as Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Timor-Leste, Guatemala, Afghanistan, Iraq – have marked a significant shift from the ‘first generation’ of transitional states such as Argentina or Chile (Lutz 2006). While the latter cases marked transitions from dictatorships to civilian governance in countries with functioning state institutions, the former cases illustrate shifts from widespread, complex conflict to a situation of volatile peace. In addition, in recent cases, those wishing to deal with the past have been faced with destroyed social and institutional infrastructure, and the prospect of dealing with thousands of victims, perpetrators and bystanders (ibid.). 283

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Nonetheless, victims do place a burden on court processes and truth commissions to deal with such social justice issues, even if these measures are immensely politically difficult. Indeed, in some instances, those involved in conflict may well disregard justice or truth-telling processes altogether if they do not first see redistributive change. Improvements in job opportunities, welfare or community development can be a precondition for local participation in transitional justice ventures (Rolston 2006). Of course, the power of transitional justice bodies to compel redistributive change is quite limited. Beyond imposing individualized punishments, there is relatively little that they can do – social justice is not in their mandate. Truth commissions have some potential as they can recommend radical redistributive changes within their reports (for example, the Timorese truth commission argued that states such as the US, UK, Australia and Portugal, as well as multi-national corporations, especially arms manufacturers, had a duty to provide compensation to the Timorese people) but, unfortunately, such recommendations are generally ignored by local politicians and international powers. And, without such tangible responses to the official recognition of violations, the impact of transitional justice bodies is ‘undermined’ and ‘weakened’ (Fletcher and Weinstein 2002, 630; Mani 2002). Undoubtedly, the most significant aspects of redistributive change lie with the issues of economy and sustainable development. In this respect, internationals have considerable sway, not only in providing aid or opportunities for development but also by structuring wider economic opportunities through reconstruction or statebuilding practices. Of course, as many (Mackenzie 2006; Pogge 2002; Woods 2000) have previously noted, international decision-making in terms of the economy has not always resulted in equitable or fair consequences for most of the world’s population. For example, the dominant strategies pursued by international financial institutions, to follow a remit of privatization, foreign investment and export production, can undermine rather than enhance local capacities for sustainable development (Mani 2002). These global bodies can work in ways that embed economic frameworks that deepen structural inequalities further. The recent transformation of economic structures within Iraq provides a telling example of how such inequalities can be consolidated through international actions, and how this fuels further conflict and unrest. The role of internationals, specifically the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and Western corporations, in imposing a neoliberal market economy that permits full foreign ownership of national assets, has had significant repercussions in Iraq (Whyte 2007). The large-scale dumping of foreign commodities on the local market has killed many local industries and the CPA has institutionalized corruptive practices, including the theft of Iraqi public funds, by occupying powers (ibid.). The resulting economic and political dominance of internationals has led to increasing instability and violence within this country. In this context, when economic circumstances for most Iraqis have become increasingly unstable, other formal justice measures will be surely devalued. In such examples, internationals pursue their own ‘victories’ through transitional conditions. This facet of transitional injustice is not always undertaken blatantly as sometimes the progression of external economies and resources can 284

Tr ansit io nal Just ic e be acquired in less conspicuous ways. For instance, it is clear that UN missions in transitional states, that have created and employ ‘a new elite cadre of statebuilding experts who move on to new conflict situations’ when their contracts are over (Charlesworth 2007, 10), spend massive resources on imported capital and skills. These UN missions also, as highlighted above, tend to be relatively shortterm in their approach, an issue that undoubtedly provides new experiences for internationals flown in to provide assistance but one that negatively affects issues of local ownership, capacity-building or sustainability. While internationals may establish ‘wonderful … initiatives’, sometimes at significant expense, they are all too often ‘left abandoned and decaying when the foreign support concludes’ (Schabas 2006, 39). The lack of sustainability following international interventions can also result from state-building initiatives that do not make sense at the local level. As D innen (2004) highlights in his discussions on the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission in the Solomon Islands, international attempts to build new Western-style states in countries that have decentralized systems, and in which non-state and subnational institutions wield significant power at a local level, may well be flawed from the outset in terms of their potential sustainability. Taking a global template of state-building, particularly the prevalent one that privileges notions of the state as being deeply connected to border control, security and terrorism, is bound to fail in many transitional states, not least because such a focus obscures the more pressing local challenges of development, health care or poverty (ibid.). Therefore, how internationals participate in reconstruction, or construction, of state institutions can have a major impact on the local population’s sense of wellbeing and justice. If state-building or capacity-building measures are such that local people endure increasing insecurity or poverty – or that they remain incapable of fulfilling newly established roles due to lack of training or enforcement of provisions – then their perceptions of justice may well be downgraded (Stanley 2008, 146–7). After all, what might an official acknowledgement of suffering mean to a victim, when they continue to struggle to acquire food, clear water or safe housing?

Reworking the Role of Internationals In an era in which trials and commissions are being rapidly dispersed around the world, this chapter has shown that they provide a mixed truth and justice response for human rights victims. D espite the potential of local–international collaborations to pursue transitional justice, international actors have regularly dominated new initiatives. In this context, provisions have frequently operated in ways that have excluded local populations, consolidated Western norms and structural inequalities, and downgraded opportunities for social justice. Further, the initial role of internationals and international structures in undertaking and supporting violations is regularly minimized.

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns The critique presented here of international involvement in transitional states does not automatically imply a romantic argument that the local is utopian, as this is clearly not the case. For example, even when internationals encourage the participation of vulnerable populations, say women, in truth-telling or justice processes, they can still find that domestic actors continue to treat them poorly – women may be treated as outcasts for speaking publicly about their victimization; they may be excluded from domestic political spheres or from work opportunities; and they may continue to endure violence within the home (Bell and O’Rourke 2007; Franke 2006). Therefore, local cultures and traditions of violence or inequality may well continue, despite strong international efforts for social change through transitional justice measures. Under such conditions, internationals may feel ambivalent about local pressures and conditions. Nonetheless, local participation is vital if transitional justice processes are to have a chance of relevance or success. The legitimacy of these bodies is dependent on the inclusion of local populations and, from the discussions above, it seems that internationals could do far more to ensure local participation within locally relevant transitional initiatives. In particular, transitional justice mechanisms that are established from the ground up, that are meaningful to local populations, are more likely to succeed. The views and needs of those closest to the crimes should be foremost in the negotiations on, and establishment of, transitional justice measures. This may sometimes mean that local models of justice – that include traditional processes of dealing with conflict or unrest at community levels – take prominence while Western models – such as the use of individualized prosecutions – become less dominant. Whatever the particulars of such specific models, the role of internationals should ideally revolve around reacting to, and supporting, local requirements, in ways that enhance human rights ideals. This chapter also makes clear that transitional justice bodies cannot be operated in isolation from other initiatives of development and social justice. The success of transitional justice initiatives is dependent on and contextualized by other institutions and programs (Orentlicher 2007). In order for justice to emerge, there have to be ‘multiple’, culturally relevant ‘pathways to justice’ for victims (RohtArriaza 2006, 8). This position requires the creation of many institutions and groups (at local, national and international levels) to build the diverse elements of justice. From this viewpoint, further attention to the balance between short- and longterm interventions in transitional states would be appropriate. However, this also requires care as, while (as shown above) short-term approaches can undermine attempts to build capacity and confidence within emerging institutions, long-term international involvement in transitional states can also embed a dependency on external assistance or ‘generate resentment and resistance among local officials’ as internationals are viewed as taking over (D innen 2004, 6). Thus, to reiterate, interventions must be undertaken with sensitivity, responding directly to local needs and wishes. Finally, in a period in which internationals continually demand accountability for gross human rights violations, they have to be prepared for all of the 286

Tr ansit io nal Just ic e consequences that this position might entail. That it, resources and commitment to transitional justice must be engaged; as Cryer (2005, 287) argues, ‘It is simply not acceptable to demand that something be done, then refuse to assist what are frequently devastated societies to do so’. If mainstream international institutions wish to create a global human rights culture, they cannot continue to renege on the economic, political and strategic support needed for truth and justice.

References Abraham, I., and van Schendel, W. (2005), ‘Introduction: The Making of Illicitness’, in van Schendel, W., and Abraham, I. (eds), Illicit Flows and Criminal Things: States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press). Bell, C., and O’Rourke, C. (2007), ‘D oes Feminism Need a Theory of Transitional Justice? An Introductory Essay’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 1:1, 23–44. Bhatia, M.V. (2005), ‘Fighting Words: Naming Terrorists, Bandits, Rebels and Other Violent Actors’, Third World Quarterly 26:1, 5–22. Breytenbach, B. (1994), ‘D og’s Bone’, The New York Review of Books 41:10, 3–6. Brody, R. (2006), ‘The Prosecution of Hissène Habré: International Accountability, National Impunity’, in Roht-Arriaza, N., and Mariezcurrena, J. (eds). Byrnes, A. (1988–89), ‘Women, Feminism and International Human Rights Law – Methodological Myopia, Fundamental Flaws or Meaningful Marginalisation?’, Australian Year Book of International Law 12, 205–40. Cassel, D . (1995), ‘International Truth Commissions and Justice’, in Kritz, N. (ed.), Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes, Vol. I: General Considerations (Washington, D C: United States Institute of Peace). Chandler, D . (2006), ‘Back to the Future? The Limits of Neo-Wilsonian Ideals of Exporting D emocracy’, Review of International Studies 32, 475–94. Charlesworth, H. (2007), Building Democracy and Justice after Conflict, Cunningham Lecture 2006, Occasional Paper No. 2 (Canberra: The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia). Chinkin, C. (1998), ‘International Law and Human Rights’, in Evans, T. (ed.), Human Rights Fifty Years On: A Reappraisal (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Chopra, J. (2003), ‘Building State Failure in East Timor’, in Milliken, J. (ed.), State Failure, Collapse and Reconstruction (Oxford: Blackwell). Cohen, S. (2001), States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (Cambridge: Polity). Crelinsten, R. (2003), ‘The World of Torture: A Constructed Reality’, Theoretical Criminology 7:3, 293–318. Cryer, R. (2005), ‘Post-Conflict Accountability: A Matter of Judgement, Practice or Principle?’, in White, N., and Klaasen, D . (eds), The UN, Human Rights and PostConflict Situations (Manchester: Manchester University Press). 287

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Cunneen, C. (2008), ‘Understanding Restorative Justice through the Lens of Critical Criminology’, in Anthony, T., and Cunneen, C. (eds), The Critical Criminology Companion (Sydney: Hawkins Press). D e Faria, C. (2005), ET’s Quest for Justice: The Serious Crimes Files (D ili: Office of the D eputy General Prosecutor for Serious Crimes in Timor-Leste). D innen, S. (2004), ‘Lending a Fist? Australia’s New Interventionism in the Southwest Pacific’, presented at the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project Seminar, The Australian National University, 18 March 2004. Evans, T. (1998), ‘Introduction: Power, Hegemony and the Universalization of Human Rights’, in Evans, T. (ed.), Human Rights Fifty Years On: A Reappraisal (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Farmer, P. (2003), Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Fletcher, L., and Weinstein, H. (2002), ‘Violence and Social Repair: Rethinking the Contribution of Justice to Reconciliation’, Human Rights Quarterly 24, 573–639. Franke, K. (2006), ‘Gendered Subjects of Transitional Justice’, Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 15:3, 813–28. Fraser, N. (2005), ‘Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World’, New Left Review 36: Nov–D ec, 69–88. Galtung, J. (1994), Human Rights in Another Key (Cambridge: Polity Press). Hayner, P. (2001), Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (London: Routledge). Kaye, M. (1997), ‘The Role of Truth Commissions in the Search for Justice, Reconciliation and D emocratisation: The Salvadorean and Honduran Cases’, Journal of Latin American Studies 29, 693–716. Linton, S. (2002), ‘New Approaches to International Justice in Cambodia and East Timor’, IRRC 84:845, 93–119. Longman, T. (2006), ‘Justice at the Grassroots? Gacaca Trials in Rwanda’, in RohtArriaza, N., and Mariezcurrena, J. (eds) Lutz, E. (2006), ‘Transitional Justice: Lessons Learned and the Road Ahead’, in Roht-Arriaza, N., and Mariezcurrena, J. (eds). Mackenzie, S. (2006), ‘Systemic Crimes of the Powerful: Criminal Aspects of the Global Economy’, Social Justice 33:1, 162–82. Mani, R. (2002), Beyond Retribution: Seeking Justice in the Shadows of War (Cambridge: Polity Press). Mertus, J. (2000), ‘Truth in a Box: The Limits of Justice through Judicial Mechanisms’, in Amadiuma, I., and An-Na’im, A. (eds), The Politics of Memory, Truth, Healing and Social Justice (London: Zed Books). Nattrass, N. (1999), ‘The Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Business and Apartheid: A Critical Evaluation’, African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society 98: 392, 373–91. Nevins, J. (2003), ‘Restitution over Coffee: Truth, Reconciliation and Environmental Violence in East Timor’, Political Geography 22, 677–701. Ní Aoláin, F. (2006), ‘Political Violence and Gender during Times of Transition’, Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 15:3, 829–49. 288

Tr ansit io nal Just ic e Orford, A. (2006), ‘Commissioning the Truth’, Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 15:3, 851–83. Orentlicher, D . (2007), ‘“Settling Accounts” Revisited: Reconciling Global Norms with Local Agency’, The International Journal of Transitional Justice 1:1, 10–22. Patrick, I. (2001), ‘East Timor Emerging from Conflict: The Role of Local NGOs and International Assistance’, Disasters 25:1, 48–66. Pogge, T. (2002), World Poverty and Human Rights (Cambridge: Polity Press). Pouligny, B. (2006), Peace Operations Seen from Below: UN Missions and Local People (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press). Roht-Arriaza, N. (2006), ‘The New Landscape of Transitional Justice’, in RohtArriaza, N. and Mariezcurrena, J. (eds). Roht-Arriaza, N. and Mariezcurrena, J. (eds) (2006), Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rolston, B. (2006), ‘D ealing with the Past: Pro-State Paramilitaries, Truth and Transition in Northern Ireland’, Human Rights Quarterly 28:3, 652–75. Rosenblum, N. (2002), ‘Justice and the Experience of Injustice’, in Minow, M. with Rosenblum, N. (ed.), Breaking the Cycles of Hatred: Memory, Law, and Repair (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Schabas, W. (2006), ‘The Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, in Roht-Arriaza, N., and Mariezcurrena, J. (eds). Sikkink, K., and Walling, C. (2006), ‘Argentina’s Contribution to Global Trends in Transitional Justice’, in Roht-Arriaza, N., and Mariezcurrena, J. (eds). Sriram, C. (2004), Confronting Past Human Rights Violations: Justice vs Peace in Times of Transition (London: Frank Cass). Stanley, E. (2008), Torture, Truth and Justice: The Case of Timor-Leste (London: Routledge). Stover, E., et al. (2006), ‘Bremer’s “Gordian Knot”: Transitional Justice and the US Occupation of Iraq’, in Roht-Arriaza, N., and Mariezcurrena, J. (eds). Teitel, R. (2000), Transitional Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Whyte, D . (2007), ‘The Crimes of Neo-Liberal Rule in Occupied Iraq’, British Journal of Criminology 47:2, 177–95. Woods, N. (2000), ‘The Challenge to International Institutions’, in Woods, N. (ed.), The Political Economy of Globalization (New York: St Martin’s Press).

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PART IV DIMENSIONS OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE

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18 Poverty, Inequality and Global D istributive Justice Luis Cabrera

Trying to be helpful, the delegation of immigrant-rights activists from the US, who were being hosted by a local family in an area of intense outmigration in southeastern Mexico, shucked dried corn to be made into the family’s staple tortillas. Grasping the cobs, they wrenched, pried and scraped with thumbnails to remove hard yellow kernels, depositing them in a bucket on the table in front of them, and occasionally by accident on the bare concrete floor of the family’s living room. When they had nearly finished, another member of the delegation swept the stray kernels and accumulated dirt and detritus of the day into a small pile on the floor. As she went in search of a dustpan, a female member of the Mexican household entered the room and, spotting the pile, shook her head slightly. She bent and began to pick each kernel out. Then she scouted the room for kernels still hidden in corners or under furniture. Eventually, she added a small additional handful to the bucket (Author field observation, March 2007). Meanwhile, a year later and across the Atlantic Ocean, those holding citizenship in another of the world’s most affluent countries had set their prime minister’s head shaking over their own habit of tossing food away. Specifically, researchers had found that Britons waste each year more than 4 million tons of edible items, including more than 1.9 billion potatoes, 2.6 billion slices of bread, 1 billion tomatoes, 1.6 billion apples, 440 million sausages, 220 million rashers of bacon, 259 million chocolates and sweets, and so on (WRAP 2008). The total represented nearly 20 per cent of all food purchased in the study period, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown noted that the average household could expect to save more than ₤400 (or roughly US$800) per year through cutting its food wastage (Winnett 2008). Food waste figures in the US, with some 300 million residents to Britain’s 60 million, were estimated to be at least as high in percentage terms, and possibly higher (Martin 2008). This chapter takes as its departure point such continuing disparities between the relatively comfortable lifestyle that is enjoyed by about one sixth of the global population, and the far more economically precarious lives that are led by the rest,

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns who overwhelmingly are located in developing countries. Those kinds of disparities, and especially the absolute poverty faced by hundreds of millions in developing states subsisting on less than US$1 per day, have prompted numerous political theorists in recent years to question the justice of the global system, in particular its performance according to measures of distributive justice. Principles of distributive justice are understood as those used to determine a defensible allocation of benefits and burdens within a specific set of individuals. Theorists exploring questions of global distributive justice have given significant attention to the applicable scope of such principles, or how far the set of individuals should be presumed to extend. Attention also has been focused on the shape of distributions within it; that is, how egalitarian should be the principles that apply to all within the set, as well as to the kinds of goods that should be viewed as appropriately distributed. For example, some have argued that not only resources but opportunities should be more broadly distributed, in the form of freer immigration or other changes in global membership regimes. Here I examine some of the most prominent approaches to arguing for a global extension of distributive justice, and some critiques. I first offer detail on specific deprivations faced by those within less affluent states. Then I consider accounts arguing for a global extension of John Rawls’s influential theory of distributive justice on grounds that economic interdependence has effectively created a global institutional order, and alternatively that such an order can be said to harm the global poor. Responses to such arguments are considered, as are alternate approaches to justifying global transfers, including those grounded in forms of consequentialism, and in an imperative to create the conditions under which human capabilities can be realized. Some arguments are then examined that would attempt to limit overseas obligations by reference to sacrifices compatriots make on each other’s behalf, by reference to collective responsibility, and to institutional impositions made by compatriots on one another.

Rawlsian Interdependence Theorists The deprivations faced by those in many developing states remain chronic and extensive, and they continue to provide much of the impetus for theorizing in the area of international or global distributive justice. According to figures published by the UN Millennium Project (2006; also see UN 2008): • • •

Each year, some 6 million children die of malnutrition-related causes before age 5. More than 1 billion people subsist on the equivalent of less than US$1 per day, while some 2.7 billion live on less than US$2 per day. More than 300 million people are infected with malaria each year, and some 3 million die annually of the disease.

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•

More than 800 million people are estimated to be chronically hungry, some 300 million of them children; of the latter, only some 8 per cent are victims of famine or other emergencies, while more than 90 per cent are simply chronically malnourished. More than 2.6 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water, and 5 million die each year from waterborne illnesses.

In terms specifically of inequalities, recent research shows that the 24 affluent countries belonging to the high income group of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and D evelopment (OECD ), while accounting for just under 15 per cent of global population, control more than 83 per cent of global household wealth (D avies et al. 2006, Table 8). The US, at the top of the range, reported household wealth at US$144,000 per capita, while India, near the bottom, reported US$1,100 per capita. Income equalities show a broadly similar pattern of disparities between richer and poorer countries, and giving further weight, many theorists would contend, to calls for redistribution across national boundaries, just as domestic inequalities and generally accompanying deprivations are seen as giving weight to calls for distributions within states. Rawls’s seminal argument for domestic redistribution of income, wealth and related goods was offered in A Theory of Justice (1971), a work credited with not only knocking utilitarianism from its dominant perch, but with revitalizing the whole sub-field of normative political theory (see Hayden 2002, 1–2). For Rawls, principles of justice are strongly correlated with the operation of institutions, understood broadly as systems of rules specifying which actions are permissible in a given domain. Principles of justice are seen as appropriately applied to arrangements of major social institution into a scheme of cooperation, or what Rawls calls a society’s basic structure (1971, 55). Rawls builds his argument for a defensible allocation of burdens and benefits in such a structure from the now familiar ‘veil of ignorance’ construct. The veil describes an original position, or initial contracting situation, in which individuals would not have knowledge of their own possession of wealth, talents, position and so forth. Understanding that they might occupy any social position upon emerging from the veil, they are expected to choose principles of justice that could be considered fair by all falling under them. The two primary principles chosen, Rawls argues, would be one dictating a scheme of equal basic liberties for all and, most salient here, a principle of distribution. The latter, ‘difference principle’, holds that social inequalities are permissible only if they work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged societal group (Rawls 1999, 263–7; see Van Parijs 2003). Virtually since the publication of A Theory of Justice, theorists have argued that Rawls could or should have included all persons in the original position, or otherwise should not have restricted justice as fairness to the domestic case (Richards 1971, 137–41; Barry 1973, 128–33; Scanlon 1973, 1066–7). Some have argued for such an extension on the grounds of interdependence between states, which they contend has transformed the global system into effectively a single scheme of cooperation (Beitz 1979, Part III; Moellendorf 2002, 30–34; see also Satz 1999). Such 295

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns interdependence claims have been challenged, in part on grounds that the global system cannot be said to constitute a mutually advantageous system of cooperation (see Barry 1991), but in fact Beitz urges a fairly broad reading of cooperation or inclusion within common schemes, maintaining that full mutual advantage is not a necessary condition (1979, 131). Neither Beitz nor other ‘Rawlsian Interdependence’ theorists (see Cabrera 2004, Chapter 3) argue for near-term, radical transformation of the global system. Rather, they emphasize more incremental changes, calling for increased interstate transfers and specific institutional reforms that would be likely to improve the situation of the worst-off global groups, consistent with the application of a global difference principle. Thomas Pogge focuses also on forms of interdependence in justifying the application of principles of justice across national boundaries, but he moves a step beyond. He argues that not only is there a common global institutional order, in terms of a common market and system of rules defining and channelling permissible competition, but that the existing system clearly is harmful to those in less affluent states. Further, those in affluent states can be held responsible for the ongoing imposition of the system of rules that predictably results in such harm, and they are obligated to make amends through transfers and institutional transformation (Pogge 1989; 2002; 2005a). Pogge’s view of harms perpetrated by those in affluent states spans a range from the broadest institutional factors to more microlevel factors that he sees as made possible by the ostensible unequal system of rules currently in place. Ultimately, he argues that those within affluent states have a strong negative duty to rectify harms perpetrated in three key ways: ‘the effects of shared social institutions, the uncompensated exclusions from the use of natural resources, and the effects of a common and violent history’ (ibid. 2002, 199), though he has given somewhat less emphasis recently to long-term historical factors (ibid. 2005b; see Risse 2005a). Pogge would lay the greatest responsibility for harms on policy-makers and other influential elites within affluent states. However, he maintains that ordinary individuals within affluent states also should be held responsible, comparing them to full citizens of slaveholding states, who may not have held slaves themselves but still may be held responsible for the institution of slavery which their routine actions helped to uphold (1989, 278; 2002, 172–3). Finally, Pogge argues that even if any individual’s contribution to imposing or sustaining harmful global institutions may appear very small, even ‘one billionth of the moral responsibility for the avoidable underfulfillment of human rights caused by the existing order’(2005c, 34, n. 41), it can be significant on the global stage. In some versions of his argument, Pogge has offered a dramatic institutional prescription for a ‘vertical dispersal of sovereignty’, under which states would be embedded in a multilayered system of institutions with varying functional responsibilities (1992; 2002, Chapter 7). The system would not constitute a global government, Pogge contends, because sovereignty would not be concentrated at any 

The 1992 article, ‘Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty’, also appears as Chapter 7 of Pogge 2002. 296

Po ver t y, Ineq ual it y and Gl o bal Dist r ibut ive Just ic e one level. It would, however, be quite comprehensive, encompassing institutions of global scope to address such global problems as environmental degradation, and involving an extensive program of devolution, accession and secession as sovereign functions are dispersed above and below states, and as states themselves are possibly reconfigured. Though he has continued to speak in general terms of responsibilities to reshape the current global order (2005c, 31), Pogge also has explored more narrowly tailored plans to address, for example, exclusions from natural resources. To that end, he has proposed the creation of a global resources dividend (GRD ), comprised of a small portion of the proceeds from the use or sale of natural resources within any state. A GRD of about 1 per cent would generate more than US$300 billion per year, Pogge estimates, enough to make ‘a phenomenal difference to the poor even within a few years’ (2002, 205; 2005a, 50–53). Some other theorists have explored the implications of exclusion from global resources, specifically the commodity of land, for global distributions. Hillel Steiner, for example, has argued that such distributions can be grounded in a Lockean frame, in which the acquisition of initially unowned resources is permissible only if one leaves ‘enough and as good’ of the resource for others. Ultimately, Steiner argues, each person should be seen as entitled to an equal share of the value of all land. To implement such an entitlement, he proposes a Global Fund to distribute a specified equal amount of resources to each, possibly in the form of a global basic income or an initial capital stake (2005, 35–6; see Steiner 1994). Matthias Risse (2008; see Blake and Risse 2006) likewise argues from grounds of common ownership of land, or of the Earth more generally conceived, that the immigration regimes maintained by current sovereign states are open to critique if those states are underusing their territory in terms of population density. He notes in particular the US, which has increased immigration enforcement significantly in the past decade, but which continues to have a mean population density of about 80 per square mile, compared to 600 for Germany and the UK (see also Carens 1992; Cabrera 2004, Chapter 3). Other theorists working broadly within a liberal-egalitarian approach to distributive justice call for similar distributions of resources and, in some cases, opportunities provided by freer immigration or other means. They are, however, cautious of placing emphasis on the interdependence of states, including harm interdependence, and they do not necessarily emphasize harms ostensibly caused by exclusions from the use of natural resources. Rather, their emphasis is on positive duties to extend distributions according to the equal moral standing that they argue should be ascribed to all individuals. Notably, the more recent Beitz, who initially had emphasized both the arbitrary distribution of natural resources in a territorial states system and state interdependence, has distanced himself from an interdependence requirement. Following D avid A.J. Richards (1982, 287–93), whom he initially had criticized for failing to emphasize state interdependence (Beitz 1979, 151, n. 54), Beitz has argued that it is not the fact of empirical integration between states, nor how far they resemble a Rawlsian scheme of cooperation, that determines the moral appropriateness of extending principles of distributive justice to the global realm. Instead, the salient factor in determining that principles of 297

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns distributive justice should be applied globally is that each person possesses the two features of moral personality highlighted by Rawls: a sense of justice and a capacity to form and pursue a specific conception of the good (Beitz 1983, 595; see Hayden 2002, 170–173). Beitz (1999) has continued to maintain that state interdependence, or the existence of a global scheme of cooperation, does retain practical importance, since it provides a basic structure to which principles of justice actually can be applied, but it is no longer to be seen as connected to a moral requirement. As highlighted by others broadly sympathetic to Rawlsian liberal-egalitarian aims, though not necessarily to Rawls’s specific approach, a move away from state interdependence helps to avoid circumstances in which individuals could be excluded from trans-state distributions because of contingent factors that caused them not to be integrally embedded in the global economy, including their states’ level of development or possession of valuable resources, or decisions made by elites in hierarchical states. Instead they also highlight universal human moral characteristics in developing and defending principles of global distributive justice (see Barry 1995, 52–67; Caney 2005, Chapter 4). Caney, for example, gives attention to the geographic luck of birth that can prove so decisive on life chances in a global system composed of sovereign states that are formally equal but highly unequal in their abilities to care for their own charges (2005, 110–12; Cabrera 2004, 61–2; see Goodin 1988). Caney and this author both have argued for the global application of principles of equal opportunity, though with the acknowledgment that deep institutional changes would be needed to move toward such application (Cabrera 2004, Chapter 3; Caney 2005, Chapter 4; see Moellendorf 2002, 49; cf. Miller 2007, 62–7).

Utilitarian and Capabilities Approaches Separate major approaches which would not emphasize interdependence in extending principles of distributive justice globally, and which also would not be characterized as liberal-contractarian or liberal-egalitarian, include the globally oriented utilitarianism most closely associated with Peter Singer (1972), and the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2006). Singer’s initial argument called graphic attention to the horrors of global poverty, with particular attention to the situation then obtaining in East Bengal (Bangladesh), where some 9 million persons had become refugees in the wake of a cyclone and civil war. Focusing directly on the individual level, Singer chided those in affluent countries for having, … with very few exceptions, not responded to the situation in any significant way. Generally speaking, people have not given large sums to relief funds; they have not written to their parliamentary representatives demanding increased government assistance; they have not demonstrated in the streets, held symbolic fasts, or done anything else directed toward providing the refugees with the means to satisfy their essential needs (1972, 200). 298

Po ver t y, Ineq ual it y and Gl o bal Dist r ibut ive Just ic e Such individuals were failing in a very basic moral duty, Singer argued, comparable to, in a since much-debated analogy (see Richards 1982; Mayerfeld 1997), failing to rescue a drowning child when all they would suffer might be muddied clothes. The moral imperative, Singer asserted, is that individuals should prevent something bad from happening if they can do so without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance or, in a more moderate version, without sacrificing anything of moral significance (1972, 231). The strong version, consistent with the preference utilitarianism that grounds Singer’s approach (see Kuper and Singer 2005, 180), is generally understood to require individuals to sacrifice – in this case to make transfers from their personal resources – until they have made themselves worse off than those they are trying to help. The weaker version is less determinate, but it still could be quite demanding. Responding to criticisms about a seemingly unattainable moral heroism demanded by his argument, Singer later modified his claims, though not the core of his argument. He stated that if it were indeed the case that such demands were so onerous on the globally affluent that they actually could be counterproductive in terms of generating transfers, then some lower level of obligation could be applicable, perhaps 10 per cent of income (1977, 48; see also Hooker 2001, 162–4). More recently he has argued that a contribution level of as little as 1 per cent could be appropriate (Singer 2002, 194), if it actually would encourage the transfer of more resources, though he also has argued that relatively well-off individuals within affluent states still should see themselves as morally obligated to donate virtually all of their income that now goes to luxury or otherwise non-necessity goods (1999). Singer’s approach has generated intense debate and critique (see Murphy 1993; Cullity 1994; Arthur 1996; Kamm 1999), though it is not also without its prominent defenders (Unger 1996; Arneson 2004). As we saw, Singer answered critics of his scheme’s ‘demandingness’ with an acknowledgment that, according to its own consequentialist grounding, the argument would require less of the globally affluent if requiring more actually would result in a backlash and fewer transfers. More recently, Singer has answered criticisms about his focus on individual transfers. Andrew Kuper, for example, argues that Singer, in emphasizing individual charitable transfers, actually could be advocating moves that overall would harm the global poor more than help. More effective assistance could take the form of purchasing goods made in developing states, channelling tourism into such states, granting mining and drilling concessions in developing regions to firms that agree to help address medical and social needs in those regions, focusing activism on such activities as providing a stable funding based for UN development efforts, and supporting microcredit and like efforts in less affluent states (Kuper and Singer 2005). Singer has responded that such changes actually would be consistent with his underlying preference utilitarian approach. Perhaps more significantly, he has explored in detail changes in global governance that could improve the situation of the global poor. Those would include a transformation in the global trade regime regulated by the World Trade Organization, on climate change initiatives, and in international law, while maintaining his emphasis on the need for individuals to make contributions to such development NGOs as Oxfam. Ultimately, Singer 299

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns suggests, a system of relatively tightly integrated global institutions broadly similar to the EU could mean significant improvements in the lives of the global poor (2002, 199–201), though he acknowledges that the political will to achieve such changes remains some way off. Separately, Nussbaum and Sen have developed complementary strands in the capabilities approach, which focuses in general on ‘what people are actually able to do and to be, in a way informed by an intuitive idea of a life that is worthy of the dignity of the human being’ (Nussbaum 2006, 70; see Sen 1999). Nussbaum offers a detailed list of core human capabilities, though one that has evolved as she has developed the approach in various works (see Nussbaum 1999a; 1999b). The ability to exercise such capabilities, she argues, should be viewed by all governments as core human entitlements that should be respected and protected or implemented. They include bodily integrity and good health, the latter meant to include adequate nourishment and shelter; being able to use the senses, imagination and thought in a ‘“truly human” way, a way informed by thought and cultivated by an adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical and scientific training’; being able to exercise emotion, to participate politically, hold property and exercise practical reason (Nussbaum 2006, 76–7; see Nussbaum 1999a, 235). The capabilities approach has been influential, both in the global justice literature (see Robeyns 2005) and in actual efforts to address deprivations. For example, under Sen’s influence as an initial adviser, the annual UN Human D evelopment Report measures and reports well-being within states not only according to GNP per capita and like measures, but according to a broad range of indicators consistent with core capabilities, including access to clean water, adequate nourishment and literacy (Sen 1999, 318–19, n. 41; Nussbaum 2006, 282–3; UN 2008). The approach has not been without its critics, including some who contend that it is too perfectionist in its list of human capabilities; that is, would interfere too far with individuals’ pursuit of their own conceptions of the good (Arneson 2000). Nussbaum has responded to that critique in recent work by emphasizing a pluralism inherent in the approach, where all individuals are entitled to exercise their capabilities, but none is required to be brought up to some specific level of functioning in any area. She gives the example of a religious minority, the Amish in the US, who choose not to exercise their capacity to participate politically, and who could feel rightly aggrieved if they were required to vote (2006, 79). The approach also has been criticized for ostensibly giving too little attention to how burdens and benefits actually are to be distributed, and to whether the minimum capabilities thresholds that Nussbaum identifies are defensible (see Caney 2005, 118–119). Nussbaum argues, however, that a capabilities approach is superior to both utilitarianism and forms of liberal-contractarianism when applied to questions of global justice, though she notes the substantial complementarity between capabilities and especially Rawlsian contractarianism. That would include in particular their rejection of social aggregation, or of allowing some to possibly be immiserated to increase welfare or related goods overall. Of course, a capabilities approach also shares features with the consequentialism of Singer and others in 300

Po ver t y, Ineq ual it y and Gl o bal Dist r ibut ive Just ic e its emphasis on promoting specific just outcomes, rather than on identifying just contractual procedures. Nussbaum cites her approach’s outcome emphasis as a strength in comparison to contractarian approaches, which she views as still giving too little emphasis to the varying needs of individuals, including the disabled and women in many contexts (1999a). In addition, she argues that the capabilities approach provides greater precision about what is actually owed to all human beings than approaches to global distributive justice based in universal rights (see Shue, 1996; Jones 1999), besides providing the broad theory of the human good that even the most defensible recent contract theories of distributive justice, those advocating principles or terms of cooperation that cannot be ‘reasonably rejected’ (see Barry 1995; Scanlon 1999; cf. Pogge 2001), need but cannot independently produce (Nussbaum 2006, 272).

Critiques of Global Distributive Justice Space constraints prevent a fuller discussion of approaches to global distributive justice based in human rights, as well as some significant alternatives, including Onora O’Neill’s (2000) argument for seeing not rights but duties as primary, and D avid Held’s (2004) ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ approach emphasizing the importance of securing democratic autonomy or participation for individuals in an age when domestic popular rule ostensibly has been eroded by processes of globalization, while also giving extensive emphasis to the economic entitlements of all individuals within a proposed frame of social democracy. I do want to give some consideration, however, to arguments or approaches that would attempt to restrict the application of principles of distributive justice to the domestic case, or simply attempt to justify a strong priority in distributions to compatriots. For example, Thomas Nagel (2005) has moved well beyond Pogge’s and Moellendorf’s continuing insistence on state interdependence, to argue that in the absence of some state-like sovereignty at the global level, there can be no coherent conception of global justice. Justice can only be assured, Nagel asserts, through a monopoly of enforcement power, and in the current global system, states are the only entities that control such power (2005, 116). Nagel’s argument would face significant challenges from the approaches of the later Beitz, Barry and others who have identified coherent conception of justice separate from empirical questions about the integration of states into a global scheme of cooperation, in addition to challenges to the conception of domestic consent to rule, or some related form of authorized legitimacy, on which much of Nagel’s critique of global justice rests (see Simmons 1979). Further, it is not clear why a monopoly of enforcement power within a given territory is necessary for the application of principles of distributive justice, as opposed to the actual securing of justice according to some substantive conception, within that territory, especially in light of the internal challenges to their presumed coercive monopoly that many states have faced and continue to face (see also Julius 2006; Cohen and Sabel 2006). 301

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns A number of other kinds of arguments have been offered in favour of giving compatriots distributive priority. Some have focused on conceptions of loyalty to group and ostensible difficulties with trying to extend loyalties too far (Oldenquist 1982; see Rorty 1998), while others have emphasized national sentiment more generally. In the latter category, Michael Walzer and D avid Miller have developed nuanced, broadly contractarian conceptions of nationalism that they argue will ground a defensible compatriot priority. They assert that individuals within specific national cultures understand with each other, in a way outsiders cannot, which sorts of goods should be distributed, and at what level; thus they should be permitted to give strong priority to one another (Walzer 1983; Miller 2000). Miller in particular rejects claims that there are strong obligations to distribute resources or opportunities internationally or, specifically, a global principle of equality of opportunity. He argues that any such universal principle would be illegitimately imposed on societies whose cultures place differing values on some kinds of opportunities. Both Miller and Walzer, however, can be seen to undercut their arguments against high level trans-state transfers by incorporating protections against exclusion. Such principles help their accounts to avoid valorizing oppression or tyrannical power relations as cultural goods, but they also may be foreign to some of the kinds of cultures described. Miller, for example, draws on Nussbaum and Sen in arguing that all individuals should have the opportunity to perform or achieve essential human capabilities (Miller 2004a, 128–9). Further, he reinforces that the list of capabilities is not drawn from specific cultures, because he wants to leave open the possibility that some societies may have ‘ill-informed’ beliefs about, for example, the appropriate capabilities or entitlements that women should have (Miller 2004a, 130). In allowing for the possibility that certain beliefs may be impermissible, however, the argument appears to significantly undercut its own bar on imposing beliefs or understandings about appropriate capabilities from the outside. If an understanding about which capabilities are truly essential may be legitimately advocated for such societies, then it may also be true that some relatively robust conception of equal opportunity, including a broader capabilities set, could be appropriately promoted in the global system. Walzer’s account prescribes a hands-off approach by outsiders to even a caste society, yet he would insist that disgruntled members of the lowest castes should have the ability to press for change with the rest of their society. Such insistence on even mildly democratic political forms could be in deep tension with the kinds of shared national or cultural values that are held up as reasons why distributions can and should be limited to the compatriot set (Walzer 1983, 313; see D owning and Thigpen 1986). Another approach to limiting distributions, one which also places some emphasis on shared cultural understandings but in a collective responsibility frame, is explored by a number of recent authors, including the later John Rawls, in his own extension of his theory to the global level (1999, 117; see Miller 2004a, 2004b; Risse 2005b, Bertram 2005). These authors see global poverty as an unfortunate reality arising from historical and geographic factors, types of governance and, to some extent, the political culture and choices made by national communities. As in 302

Po ver t y, Ineq ual it y and Gl o bal Dist r ibut ive Just ic e the discussion of Miller’s account above, affluent societies are seen as having some duty of beneficence or mutual aid to help secure at least a subsistence level existence for those in poor societies, but not more. Just as we hold individuals responsible for the choices they make, these authors assert, we can hold societies responsible for the choices they make that can determine how affluent or impoverished they will become. Rawls, for example, offers scenarios involving two societies of about the same initial wealth but which have different conceptions of the appropriate roles of women. One society achieves low population growth and gradually increases its wealth, while the other does not, ‘because of its prevailing religious and social values, freely held by its women’, leading it to fall behind (Rawls 1999, 118). Assuming the lagging society still has sufficient resources to remain stable and institutionally well ordered, Rawls argues, there is no higher level, cosmopolitan duty of assistance owed by the better-off society. Rawls’s rejection of cosmopolitan distributive justice in The Law of Peoples has been extensively discussed, and numerous aspects of it have been critiqued, including the analogy implied here between holding individuals responsible for their freely made choices, and holding whole societies responsible (see Pogge 1994; Beitz 2000; Hayden 2000; Cabrera 2001; Caney 2005, 125–31). Miller offers a perhaps more nuanced reading of such collective responsibility, making accommodation for dissidents, or those who openly reject a collective harm that their group is perpetrating on another group (Miller 2004b, 254–5). However, if dissidents are to be excused from responsibility for harms perpetrated by a group on others, it would seem that they also should have some means of dissenting from collective actions that could harm the group itself, and likewise of escaping responsibility for such harms. For example, an individual not content with living in a society that can provide only something near the minimum in access to resources and opportunities might be seen to have some right emigrate to a more economically robust society. The claim points to a deeper challenge to a collective responsibility approach to limiting distributions, in that it would seem to illegitimately limit the menu of life options available to individuals according to their arbitrary luck of birth. Finally, some theorists have argued that strong priority to compatriots in distributions is justifiable because of the impositions they make on one another, that is, the coercion exercised on individuals via shared institutions. Richard Miller, for example, has argued that even the most deprived individuals in less affluent states should be able to acknowledge that they are treated with appropriate respect when those in affluent states give one another priority in distributions to compensate for the effects of complying with shared institutions (Miller 1998; see Blake 2001). The version of respect offered in that sort of approach has been criticized as hollow, a mere shield against possibly very strong trans-state distributive obligations (Arneson 2005). Perhaps more centrally, an argument from current imposition of institutions appears to be circular. Strong priority to compatriots is justified by reference to the impositions already being made on compatriots, yet there is no justification offered for the initial restriction of membership in the distributive set. The ‘ought’ of giving priority to compatriots is justified by reference to the ‘is’ of already existing institutions. Some further justification would be necessary 303

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns for the exclusions inherent in the set of global background institutions, that is, the sovereign states system.

Conclusion This chapter has only sketched some of the major approaches defending and critiquing global extensions of principles of distributive justice. A fuller accounting would give more detailed attention to arguments focusing on the kinds of global institutional changes that could be consistent with a global distributive justice approach, from the earlier Pogge’s vertical dispersal of sovereignty and the similarly extensive institutional scheme outlined by Caney (2005, Chapter 5), to ‘institutional cosmopolitan’ arguments for some form of global government capable of securing more just global distributive outcomes (Cabrera 2004; 2005; see Copp 2005). Hopefully the account here has given some impression of the scope and depth of the literature on global distributive justice that has emerged over the past four decades. From the vacuum of the 1960s and virtual standing start of the early 1970s, the literature was propelled by responses both to Rawls’s Theory of Justice and to Singer’s ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’. Both continue to exert significant influence, as do the capabilities, human rights and other approaches that have been offered as alternatives or extensions, with capabilities in particular playing a key role in actual efforts to alleviate global poverty. Potentially significant critiques of conceptions of global distributive justice continue to be offered, and the literature gives every indication of remaining in expansion mode for some time to come, likely with expanding opportunities for intervention into actual trans-state distributive practices.

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19 Political Exclusion of Refugees in the Ethics of International Relations Mark F.N. Franke

Contemporary debates over international ethical and political problems surrounding the plight of refugees still pivot around fundamental challenges identified by Hannah Arendt (1968, 267–302) in the aftermath of World Wars I and II in Europe regarding the relationship between displaced persons and citizenship. Arendt recognizes a crucial point – one that typically remains forgotten or suppressed in discourses of international relations (IR) – that modern sovereign states do not meet refugees and their claims to assistance and asylum as normal social phenomena but, rather, hold political responsibility for their existence. As Nevzat Soguk (1999) outlines in his recent book on the matter, insofar as states achieve the authority to perform their own legal existence, social validity and apparent autonomy through the erection and defence of exclusionary political boundaries, they produce the conditions under which some persons will be compelled to flee homelands to which they are supposedly proper and thus lose social/political standing and effective claim to rights protection. Refugees do not pose issues of international ethics that may or may not be taken up in IR – dilemmas pervading the situation of refugees are structured in the core ethics of IR itself. Yet refugees are formed within IR to describe the outside of political and ethical life of states. Thus appropriate ethical address of refugee issues is never something that can be accomplished within IR, it can come about only in the challenging of IR as a convention in the study and politics in the world. There is undeniable and genuine concern for refugees expressed across the range of studies made of them but, to the extent that research and debate on these issues are framed as questions of ethics, the effect is to skew the ethical as a domain to be grappled with by only states and citizens. Typically refugees are not identified as participants in the ethical debates concerning their own fortunes, as if refugees are not competent as ethical agents but free citizens are. This perspective is all the more entrenched by the legal and political mechanisms formed worldwide

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns to negotiate and provide solutions for refugees in the forms of status assessment and determination, assistance and protection. The mechanisms themselves are essential to the production of persons’ identities as refugees per se, and they are crucial in forming the moral authority of states and citizens over refugees as such. Conventional scholarly investigations of these problems follow suit and serve largely to situate refugees as objects of ethical concern, persons at a distance from civility who may even threaten the conditions of international ethical conduct. The central challenge facing scholarly debate over the ethics and politics of refugees in IR is not a matter of gaining better understanding of how refugees pose ethical dilemmas for non-refugees, nor is it a matter of parsing more clearly the duties of citizens to strangers. Rather the challenge is to engage far more critically with the politics that allows for comfort in the ethical chauvinism of citizens to begin with and to explore the situation of refugees to citizens as formed within ethical relations.

Historical Formation of Refugees in the Ethics of International Relations There are efforts to trace the struggles of refugees as something that may be studied in events of human displacement going back at least as far as sixteenth-century Europe, especially in reference to the French expulsion of Huguenots in 1685, and sometimes much earlier. However, references to such historical events do not point to either origins of refugee phenomena, their consistency through time, or the constancy of refugees as an ethical concern through the ages as much as they offer glimpses into etymological development of related concepts, significant episodes wherein specific linguistic expression crystallizes around ideas of persons who, for one reason or another, have migrated far from their homelands in search of refuge elsewhere. Nevertheless, as Soguk (1999, 67–100) also argues, in relation to Aristide Zolberg’s (1985) analysis, the conceptual developments that condition modern definitions of the refugee are crucial to the conceptual development of the modern state and citizenship and, thus, IR as well. Formation of the idea of strangers without secure emplacement functions hand in hand with the development of the sovereign state and its national community as something thinkable. It has made possible the normalization of the emplaced citizen subject and the problematization of those who are without sure footing within a territorial home. Notions of ‘refugeeness’ have proved necessary for ethical descriptions of both the boundaries of national communities and the rights of nations to limit their membership. The ethical function of refugees within the possibility of IR gains solid and broad definition only as late as the 1920s, under the auspices of the League of Nations. As the League sought peace through the reorganization of imperial Europe into nation-states, under an ethic of the self-determination of peoples, its members faced the inescapable fact that, due to the violences and hardship of total war and 310

Po l it ic al Exc l usio n o f Ref ugees ambiguities of social, ethnic and territorial boundaries under the previous AustroHungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires, Europe of the 1920s did not present itself as a series of coherent and territorially distinct peoples. Thus, in part out of humanitarian concern and certainly in the political interest of trying to sort out Europeans into territorializable national peoples, the League formed the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (LNHCR) to negotiate the transit of ethnic groups of persons deemed displaced from their national homelands either back home, where possible, or for naturalization in new homelands. The ethic of the exercise itself is notable, as it sought the (sometimes even forced) redistribution of millions of persons throughout the continent on the basis of a belief that people could not possibly enjoy conditions of freedom outside of full membership in national societies and that states could not be trusted to support human freedom and rights either within or without their respective borders unless they could secure their own freedom of self-determination from the potential social difference and disruption of foreigners. At bottom the League’s particular structuring of citizen/refugee relations fed the nationalist and fascist moralisms that provoked the European conflicts of World War II. As a result, while the League’s successor, the United Nations (UN), maintained the League’s ethic of national self-determination as a (now global) guide to peace beyond 1945, the notions of nation, state, sovereignty and citizenship from which it grounded its mission were very quickly reoriented and justified in terms of a different refugee. Rather than the member of a displaced national/ethnic group, the refugee envisioned within the UN system is a human individual, one whose freedom is not secured only within her or his territorial homeland and kin but who may be free wherever and with whomever there is civil society protected by sovereignty and the rule of law. In this regard, under the UN, the sovereignty of a global order of sovereign and civil states, and not mere nation-states, is given ethical legitimacy and priority in relation to and as a solution to any human who lacks the conditions under which she or he may be self-determining as a socially productive and political responsible individual. Cultivating the humanism of its new vision for global statecraft, the UN quickly presented to European states the problem and task of formally emplacing within states all Europeans who had suffered displacement as a result of World War II and its immediate aftermath and were unable to return to their former homes due to lack of civil and political security as individuals. In 1950 the UN created the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to negotiate and facilitate the sorting of such persons within the new European geopolitical order, to follow the UN’s 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees as its guide. The UNHCR’s goal originally was to help convert the bulk of such refugees into proper residents and citizens of European societies within a period of three years. However, due to the Cold War politics of state-building in Europe through the 1950s and 1960s, the problem that the UNHCR was meant to solve persisted and grew, leading the UN to renew its mandate repeatedly. Also largely due to the fact that state-building outside of Europe under the UN’s program of decolonization tended to be no more apolitical and humanistic than what occurred in Europe, by the 1960s it was clear 311

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns that refugees, as understood in the 1951 Convention, were only growing in number, globally. The UN could not even hope to effectively pursue the cultivation of civil sovereign states around the world without addressing the production of refugees far beyond Europe as well. Thus in 1967 UN members passed a Protocol to the 1951 Convention, removing geographical limits from the definition of refugee and allowing refugee status to be claimed by persons who have fled their homelands for reasons after 1951 as well, so that ever since all persons in all lands have the right to seek refugee status and protection as such with the UNHCR and within the borders of states party to these instruments of international law. Consequently, the refugee finally became recognized as a core and universal obstacle to the building of a wellordered international society of states and an obstacle that states themselves may and are mandated to remove together. In at least the past 40 years then, through the international refugee law it has supported, the UN has solidified its commitment to the notion that peaceful and successful IR will be practised where the freedom of individual humans is protected and sustained and that such freedom is possible within the confines of civil sovereign states. Following this combined ethic, about three quarters of UN members have become party to the 1967 Protocol and obligate themselves to admit as residents those refugees who claim asylum within their respective borders. However, there is instituted then a fundamental ethical conflict in the ideals of the UN which find their contradiction in the politics of refugee protection internationally. Under this logic the freedoms of both the individual human and the sovereign state are to be supported and protected, but it is only the human as free citizen with whom the project of freedom may be trusted. As it is formed in relation to the citizen, under international law the refugee is by definition the stranger who lives in conditions that are not free but also not civil, given that her or his displacement marks a lack of social and political development (Lui 2004). Thus it is up to the citizen to realize the freedom of the refugee. However, under the same ethic, the citizen also has the prior obligation to protect the freedom and order of her or his own civil state. All citizens must ask themselves whether it truly supports the UN’s ethic of human rights and freedoms to admit those who claim the need for refuge or whether it is most ethical to choose to admit only those refugees who the citizens may feel certain are capable of civility themselves.

Skewing the Ethical as Something for Citizens, not Refugees Negotiation of the ethical tensions surrounding refugees is deeply vexed by the fact that the subject position they inhabit is formed in terms of human rights that are shared with citizens yet cannot be squared with the rights of humans as citizens. The basic international law that pertains to refugees is meant to protect the rights of all humans, especially once they are displaced. However, once in the position of displacement, the refugee or refugee claimant have far less effective purchase on these rights than those remaining free citizens. The main streams of scholarship 312

Po l it ic al Exc l usio n o f Ref ugees on refugees, then, involve discussions over how they are to be understood as part of international order and how the international human rights regime formed by states may ethically include refugees and administer them under this order. This primary focus on social, political and ethical inclusion, though, betrays the ways in which IR scholarship routinely aids in the political distancing of refugees by portraying them as already outside of international ethical community and debate. Consequently conventional debates over refugees in IR serve to present refugees as mere ethical problems for states and their citizens and, thus, as less than human. On a customary register, it is already recognized in the Universal D eclaration of Human Rights (UD HR) that each human has the right to move within her or his own state and the right to also leave it (UN 1948, Art. 13). The UD HR anticipates international refugee law by stating also that every human has the right to seek and enjoy asylum from persecution in another state (ibid., Art. 14). Following the direction of the UD HR, states party to the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol are required to respect these rights specifically where persons in flight fear persecution at home on the basis of their claims to internationally recognized fundamental human civil and political freedoms. The law states that the term ‘refugee’ shall apply to any person who: … owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it (UN 1951, Art. 1[A:2]). If found to meet the requirements of the definition on the soil of a state party to the Convention or Protocol, that state is then obligated to allow the person permanent residence, providing her or him with social assistance sufficient for her or him to succeed in participating in civil society again. It is unlawful for a state party to the Convention and Protocol to return a status refugee to the territories or frontiers of territories wherein their liberties are at risk (UN 1951, Art. 33), but it is possible to expel a refugee where it is found that she or he poses a security risk to the state of refuge (ibid., Art. 32) or what the UN would understand as a basic threat to global civil society (ibid., Art. 1[F]). More central to the ethical dilemmas involved, though, while states party to the Convention and Protocol may not discriminate against claims to refugee status made by persons who have arrived on their territories unlawfully (ibid., Art. 31), there is no customary or treaty requirement that states permit asylum-seekers to set foot on their soil for the purposes of making a claim to refugee status. It remains lawful for states to intercept and repel potential refugee claimants before they are in a position to exercise their basic human rights as such, and such actions are consistent with the human rights ethics promoted under the UN. Under the UN Charter human beings are encouraged to create and defend the conditions of freedom within the form of sovereign states on the principle of rights 313

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns to self-determination of peoples. As a result, a crucial question to explore is: whose rights take ethical priority, those of citizens or refugees? As of yet, this question has received no clear or obviously acceptable response in terms of either practical custom or ethically compelling answer. Some scholars trace a trend of states progressively opening themselves to the claims of refugees, others argue that citizen’s rights are clearly enjoying an advantage. Theoretically there is no convincing argument for either side and, as both Tom Clark (1999) and Maria Stavropoulou (1998) effectively show, the distinction between the human as citizen and as refugee is sufficiently ambiguous to make it impossible to establish a priority between the two. Rather than taking a clear stand for either the refugee or citizen, influential scholars across the range of refugee studies tend to recommend strategies wherein political compromise of some sort may and ought to be made between the freedoms of refugees and citizens (see Bach 2003; Barutciski and Suhrke 2001; Chalk 1998; Gibney 1999; 2004; Goodwin-Gill 1989; Harvey 2001; Warner 1999; Weiner 1996). They seek approaches where the rights claims of refugees may gain respect and attention from citizens without dramatically diminishing citizens’ freedom of self-determination. In each case, though, the principles and universality of human rights are undermined, and the strategies emerge as far more political than ethical in character. Emma Haddad (2003) has introduced a striking intervention into the debate, arguing that the rights of refugees are actually on a different register altogether from those of citizens. Her point is that we must admit to the fact that the refugee as a subject of rights is formed politically and is at a distance legally from the human per se, and this perspective enjoys some support from those who suggest that it may be legitimate to view the rights claims of refugees as secondary in order and merely complementary to those of citizens (see Gibney 2004; Helton 2002; Harvey 2001). However, the ultimate force of this kind of view may be more appropriately drawn out in Galina Cornelisse’s (2004) observation that the difference or secondary quality of refugees’ rights claims is made so by the fact that, despite its aterritorial universalism, modern international human rights law never does conceive of human freedom outside of the territorialized state to begin with. And her point is well taken as, again, this is how it is that international refugee law has focused on the re-emplacement of refugees as the fundamental ethical goal. Modern international human rights law is incapable of addressing persons on the move as human (Franke 2008). Perhaps, at least to some degree in response to the contest in rights claims between refugees and citizens that is grounded in the UN system, some scholars are now arguing that the civil and political rights celebrated most centrally in international human rights law should be amended to include responsibilities to others, where freely emplaced citizens are understood to not only have rights for themselves but also duties to respond to the rights claims of others (see Edwards 2001; Weiss 2003). This view is already reflected in regional human rights instruments in the African Union and Latin America (OAU 1969; Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 1984). Mervyn Frost (2003) gives this kind of perspective a relatively daring rendition, arguing that those who enjoy emplacement within sovereign states do 314

Po l it ic al Exc l usio n o f Ref ugees not take civil society as something to be protected so much as practised in the form of a civilianism that treats the displaced humanely. However, for citizens to take responsibility for the refugee is not really such a novel idea. The international human rights discourse and law that forms the possibility of the refugee has limited the politics of the situation so that it makes sense to speak only of the ethical responsibilities of the citizens, as the refugee is rendered as one who exists outside of the conditions of social and political responsibility. It is extraordinarily difficult to find any scholarship regarding the ethical issues surrounding refugees internationally that does not pose the ethical problems in terms of what ‘we citizens’ ought to do for ‘them, those refugees’. There is a rich and dense body of literature that investigates, details and explains the rights that refugees may legitimately claim and the grounds under which they may expect these rights to enjoy international protection (see Chimni 2000; Feller et al. 2003; Hathaway 2005; Leckie 2003; McAdam 2007; Nash 1988; von Sternberg 2002; van Krieken 1999; White and Marsella 2007). There is no doubt on an academic level that the persons defined as refugees exist as subjects active within central ethical dilemmas of contemporary IR. However, the central studies that respond to the fact of these rights and the ethical dilemmas that arise from them are fairly uniform in utterly ignoring refugees as possible participants in the debates, even where highly critical of the statism of international refugee law (see Bayefsky 2006; Benhabib 2004; Boswell 2005; Carens 2003; Gelber and McD onald 2006; Gibney 1996; 2004; Hathaway 1997; Helton 2002; Keely 1996; Loescher 1993; Maley 2003; Mandel 1997; Millbank 2004; Newman and van Selm 2003: O’Neill and Spohn 1998; Stevens 2002; Stiener et al. 2003; Taylor 2005; Waibsnaider 2006; Weiner 1996). Rather these studies tend overwhelmingly to ask questions of direct concern only to citizens and sovereign states, such as: what are our obligations in providing asylum?; to what extent are we obliged to protect refugee claimants?; does the provision of humanitarian assistance to refugees outside our borders satisfy our ethical obligations to them?; do we favour our own security too much over the rights of refugees? Absent from this domain of study is serious consideration of the ethics of defining and treating others as refugees from the start.

Politics of Dehumanizing Refugees in the Instruments of their Identification Since ethical analysis over refugees in IR focuses most centrally on questions of refugee rights and the obligations of citizens and states to protect and respond to their rights claims, both the politics and analyses of addressing the plight of refugees have revolved around the Convention definition itself. The oppositional and even contesting relationships in which refugees and emplaced citizens are formed with one another has made it crucial for even staunch advocates of refugees’ rights to be able to show that refugee claimants do indeed satisfy the 315

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Convention definition. For the sake of both sides, scrutiny of the validity of refugee claims and identities is of primary concern, and questions about how states and UN organizations may most effectively manage the conditions under which this scrutiny may be undertaken with confidence are now serious matters of ethical debate. Underlying this general will to establish defined identity, though, is the fact that those persons who are recognized as refugees and enjoy assistance and protection as such are further labelled and formed as only the targets of ethical address (see Hyndman 2000; Malkki 1995; Zetter 1991; 2007). Accordingly those rejected or not trusted within the assessment system are even further disqualified from respect as fellow human beings. Under the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol, members of the UN have already made the controversial ethical judgement that it is persecution only on the bases of the specific civil and political rights listed in the definition that are worthy of refugee status, but states must still be able meet the very difficult challenge of distinguishing clearly between Convention refugees and persons migrating for social, economic, cultural or environmental reasons. However, as is shown in critical studies of the exercises in status assessment, such distinctions cannot be found but are actually produced in the assessments themselves (see Hardy 2003; Hardy and Phillips 1997; 1999; Lacroix 2004; Parker and Brassett 2005; Shacknove 1985). Persecutions on grounds of nationality are perhaps not difficult to discern. It is not at all clear-cut, though, when persecution on the basis of a person’s acts of conscience may be interpreted as violations of religious freedoms per se. Given that race is not an objective fact but an identity that is socially constituted through such acts as persecution, it may not be clear to state officials what race actually is in all circumstances nor how racialization may be coextensive with persecution. It also can be extraordinarily difficult to demonstrate when a social group is suffering politically per se. Prominent cases of dispute in this regard involve women and persons whose sexual orientations are outside of heterosexual norms, or where there are debates over whether discrimination and subordination on the bases of sex, gender or sexuality are formed through political, social or cultural acts. Thus, following this example alone, one can see that what constitutes political opinion, as opposed to any other kind of opinion, is open to interpretation as well. And in any regard, recognition of the rights-bearing refugee is reduced to a bureaucratic act rather than a social encounter (Bakewell 2001, 6). While status assessment procedures produce, rather than find, refugees as objects of concern for citizens, scholars are also increasingly cognisant of the ways in which these procedures also reduce the identity of applicants in even greater numbers to the subject positions of liars, cheaters, frauds, and thus threats to social security and civil society, especially where given sensational focus by news media (see Akram 2002; D aniel and Knudsen 1995; Esses et al. 2008; Fangen 2006; Kushner 2003; Leudar et al. 2008; Worth 2002). The conditions of most refugee claims are such that little or no objective or corroborating documentation of persecution is available. In almost all cases the determination of status rests on subjective assessment of the credibility of the claimant and the story that she or he has to tell (see Showler 2006). In this regard, studies are showing that credibility can be and is deeply and negatively 316

Po l it ic al Exc l usio n o f Ref ugees effected by the degrees of stress, intimidation, problems of interpretation, health care interventions and cultural misunderstandings that any claimant may suffer in the process (see Lavik et al. 1996; Masinda 2004; Miserez 1988; Pöllabauer 2004; Rousseau et al. 2002). Moreover, through assessment the human subject claiming refugee status is then easily treated as a mere body or psyche to be scrutinized, as if a thing (Fassin 2005), coaxing the claimants to engage in self-objectification under the guise of the ‘good refugee’ (see Gross 2004) and encouraging claimants’ advocates sometimes to display their clients as juvenile members of humanity capable of maturation under the familial support of civil society (see Tilbury 2007). Regardless though, where refugee claimants are not granted the status they seek, they are then branded socially as persons who cannot be trusted and thus not fit for civil society. The subtleties of the claimants’ concerns and experiences are lost, possibly compounding the effects of any persecution suffered before. Additionally some studies show that the effective public condemnation as liars is then the root of severe psychological harm (see Fassin 2007; Watters 2007), making it even more difficult for rejected claimants to negotiate their highly vulnerable situations – unwelcome in the state of application, likely also unwelcome and possibly even subject to prosecution in the states from which they first fled, and ineligible for assistance or protection under the UNHCR. Rather than directly face the ethical and political problems inherent to mobilizing responses to refugee rights solely on the basis of the Convention definition, in recent decades the so-called asylum states have worked hard and fairly successfully in displacing the location of these politics from within their own territories to their peripheries and states overseas, provoking some of the greatest contemporary outrage and concern in how the ethics over refugee protection is to be resolved. The states funding the UNHCR have managed to cultivate a shift in the organization’s ethic from one of facilitating resettlement to one largely concerned with containing refugee flows close to the regions of displacement, privileging the option of repatriation and providing mere humanitarian assistance, as opposed to rights protection, until a return home is deemed possible. Some states, most notably Australia, have adopted this ethic on their own shores, establishing coastal detention centres for refugee claimants where assessment hearings are not eagerly pursued and return or simple repulsion is the ultimate aim. The bulk of resources are now placed into UNHCR-sponsored and state-operated refugee camps and centres of assistance in poor regions of Africa and southeast Asia, where refugee claimants are encouraged to remain until the UNHCR is able to negotiate safe return home. The effect is to treat the displacement of refugees as moments of regional emergency despite the fact that even some very large groups of persons have remained both displaced and contained under UNHCR assistance for several generations. It is typically the case that refugee status is determined by the UNHCR in its own camp settings, insulating the wealthier states from the obligations associated with refugee claims and assessment on their own soil in the future and allowing asylum states the opportunity to hand-pick refugees from the camps on the basis of an allegedly humanitarian immigration policy (see D auvergne 2005).

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns It is the emphasis that states now place on a mere humanitarianism that is drawing the greatest critical response from scholars (see Edkins 2000; Harrell-Bond 1986; Hyndman 2000; Kennedy 2004; Lischer 2005), provoking a wide-ranging rethinking about the politics of the whole category of refugee and the ethics of exclusionary citizenship as well (see Nyers 2006; Soguk 1999). An increasing number of studies now show that, on balance, the humanitarian assistance for refugees being provided for refugees in camp and detention situations simply fails to come close to addressing the reasons for their flight, or to protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms. Moreover, the conditions of life established in these sites of containment often allow for even more widespread and profound violation of refugee rights than were the reason for their initial displacement, along with the intensification of social and cultural problems that may already be present between persons under protection (see Silove et al. 2007; Szczepanikova 2005; Verdirame and Harrell-Bond 2005; Waters 2001). Instead, this assistance is directed at keeping people alive in secure containment facilities as if refugees are, at least temporarily, surplus humanity (see Agamben 1998, 119–35; Bauman 2004; Rajaram and GrundyWarr 2004) until it is deemed by the UN that it is safe for them to return home. In this respect, like the LNHCR in different circumstances, the UNHCR has been involved even in the forcible return of refugees. In any event, as is established most clearly in Jennifer Hyndman’s (2000) recent study of camps in eastern Africa and as is reflected in Savitri Taylor’s (2005) argument for international cooperative address of irregular migration, international response to the plight of refugees is increasingly involving the management and control of them as populations, rendering them problems to be disciplined within the context of IR (see D ubernet 2001; Stedman and Tanner 2003; Welch 2004; 2005) and cultivating politics of resistance against state sovereignty at the same time (Moulin and Nyers 2007; Turner 2005). Rather than examine the fundamental problems in this assistance regime, the UNHCR and its supporters place greater emphasis, at the level of ethics, on curtailing what is known as ‘refugee cheating’, which amounts to what refugees and refugee claimants do to attempt self-protection and self-determination within the limits they suffer under protection, while not necessarily cooperating with UNHCR and state objectives (see Essed et al. 2004; Fangen 2006; Kibreab 2004; Kumsa 2006; McKelvey 1994; Rousseau and Foxen 2006; Turner 2006; Vincent and Sorensen 2001).

Facing Ethical Responsibilities of Refugee Politics Given the very unsatisfying ways in which refugees have ultimately been situated and treated by UN organizations, the interplay of states, and academics themselves, some attention is being placed now on how research into refugees affairs brings with it the very ethical problem of objectification, and often these studies recommend as a solution that refugees must be brought in as participants in the research and analysis. The general suggestion here is that refugees must be empowered in the process of efforts by scholars, states and organizations to understand their situation 318

Po l it ic al Exc l usio n o f Ref ugees in IR and how the international community may best respond to refugee claims. Yet as Giorgia D oná (2007) indicates, such efforts are themselves already deeply entwined with and conditioned by prior power relations within which the refugee and the researcher are set apart already as subject and object. As with the vast majority of the study of ethics in refugee issues, the position of civilian-citizen-subject is still conserved as one for whom ethics is an issue at the expense of relegating others as uncivilized-refugee-object and thus the concern of ethics. Consequently no engagement with the ethical relationships underlying the possibility of the two is yet permitted. The challenge of opening scholarship to direct engagement with the ethical dilemmas of refugees in IR remains one of finding approaches through which critical perspectives on the norms of citizenship, civility and emplacement may be effectively developed in relation to their politics of exclusion. There are a few theorists who have pushed this very point and who have begun the work of problematizing the idea of citizenship in its relation to the constitution of refugeeness (see D illon 1999; Lui 2004; Malkki 1994; Nyers 2006; Soguk 1999; Warner 1992; Xenos 1993). Their works serve largely to trace the violences of refugee formation inherent to IR. However, the greater importance of this line of scholarship is its identification of the need to also develop a politics within the context of IR that can effectively open the citizen/refugee relation as an ethical problem for the purpose of a shift in ethical practice. And exploration of what this ethical politics might be has only just begun. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, but serious exploration of this politics is not coming from the refugee studies literature itself. Rather it is being developed by scholars who are working most seriously to think critically about the ethics in IR, more generally, from which the study of refugees is constituted. The focus in this regard is a return of sorts to Immanuel Kant’s (1991) renderings of the international, wherein all rational humans seek security, civility and ethical life within the protection of their own sovereign states but within the context of global cosmopolitan right for which states strive perpetually (see Shapiro 1998). Key to Kant’s ethic is state recognition of citizens’ rights to hospitality within each other’s territories. Conventional IR sees an irresolvable conflict in this principle, which in turn informs contemporary debate over perceived tensions between citizens’ territorially secured freedoms and the rights of refugees to make claims within spaces outside their homelands. Yet, drawing directly from Jacques D errida’s rereading of this apparent contradiction, an increasing number of scholars are exploring how this irresolvable tension is exactly what allows us to move forward with an ethical address of what has come to be understood as the plight of the refugee. Taking inspiration from Emmanuel Lévinas‘s (1979; 1981) thinking through of the relationship of politics and ethics in terms of responsibility, D errida‘s (2000) basic point is that the position of emplacement enjoyed by citizens is not something that inherently inhibits ethical address of the displaced seeking asylum but rather is the basis from which such address may begin. He contends that one can welcome others only if one has formed or claimed such a space to call home, for it is only then that one has a threshold from which to be welcoming. Thus the excluding behaviour of asserting one’s sovereign right to territory brings with it the 319

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns possibility of hospitality. However, in D errida’s analysis, one’s sovereign claim to one’s territory as home is valid only insofar as one accepts the risk of an absolute hospitality to strangers. One’s home is such only in as much as it is vulnerable to the claims of others. Otherwise one’s claim to territory is little more than the tenuous seizure of space. The D erridean politics of hospitality, however, does not amount to anything like the performance of absolute openness in borders, a position that would be dismissed quickly by those making security and immigration policy for any UN member. While he argues that an unconditional principle of hospitality must form one’s ethical guide, this principle must also have practical and thus conditioned application. The principle must be realized through actual policies and political acts of welcoming. As conditioned and imperfect acts, though, they must also be rendered vulnerable to constant reconsideration and reformulation. D errida’s point is that, as beings who wish to be at home, freely and securely, we open ourselves, irrecusably, to a principle of hospitality that will never be perfected but toward which we must always strive to approximate our laws and policies regarding those who seek refuge in our home. We establish the freedom and civility of our homes to the extent that we work to render these things vulnerable, hospitable – we have homes insofar as we are able to be hospitable. Mustafa D ikeç (2002) makes the important point that what we may draw most usefully from D errida’s views is that hospitality is not an ethical response if it is grounded in Kantian deductions regarding what we may claim already to know of strangers and how policies of hospitality may be arranged to suit them. Rather, hospitality is such if it is truly open, in such ways so that those to whom hospitality is granted are not already defined as ‘refugees’ or any other such object of law and so that the citizen at home is prepared to learn from the stranger about the character of their relationship in hospitality. Moreover, as one can see in efforts to think through the application of such an ethic in specific dilemmas of international politics (see Bulley 2006; Gibson 2003; Kandiyoti 2004; Kelly 2006; Popke 2004; Worth 2006), this notion of hospitality involves a constant willingness to experience the renegotiation of one’s own sense of self and, thus, at-homeness in a mutually constituted place of learning and responsibility. The D erridean approach is, of course, open to and provokes debate. It presents many ideas that are worthy of challenge, not the least of which is his notion of an inescapable claim to being at-home and the theory of subjectivity that may be at work within it. No matter what one may think of these ideas, though, D errida’s analysis of hospitality and the efforts of those trying to rethink politics and ethics surrounding the possibility of refugees from this analysis finally do offer serious and important challenge to the ethical traps and dead-ends of IR. Instead of getting lost in the mutually reinforcing feedback loops of a communitarian versus cosmopolitan non-debate, these authors seek to appreciate and understand what is ethically at play in setting up the laws of international life in terms of state versus human freedoms from the start. Moreover, they seek political guides that may permit ongoing learning about the ethical demands of the relationships that humans establish with one another as they form them. This level of ethical 320

Po l it ic al Exc l usio n o f Ref ugees engagement is crucial. Without such creative critical exploration of the supposed grounds of ethical debate in IR, we doom ourselves to the formation of people as strangers and the irresponsible diminishing of them as such.

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20 Human Rights, Human Needs, Human D evelopment, Human Security D es Gasper

Four Abodes in the Heaven of Human Discourses Ethical discourses can have great influence in national and international affairs. Neta Crawford’s Argument and Change in World Politics (2002) reviews five centuries of debates over imperial conquest, slavery and the slave trade, forced labour, colonization, trusteeship and decolonization. Crawford shows how ethical discourses can gradually structure and restructure pre-analytical feelings and analytical attention and how they can interact with and influence other factors – by the range of comparisons that they make, by the categories and default cases that they introduce and defend, by the ways they reconstitute conceptions of ‘interests’ and perceptions of constraints. I take this position on the potential of ethical discourses as a starting point – based also on work by, for example, Audie Klotz (1995), Craig Murphy (2005) and the UN Intellectual History Project (Jolly et al. 2005) – rather than seek to argue it at length here. But I start too from the findings by these and other authors that ethical discourses certainly do not necessarily have much or any influence, and that we should consider closely under which conditions and by which modalities which types of ethical discourse may exert which types of influence. In particular, ethical discourse that remains disembodied, free-floating and not built and embedded into legal frameworks and planning methodologies, may have much less effect in development policy; less than does religious discourse. Major attempts to embed ethics within development policy discourse in recent decades include: •

The conventions on human rights, notably on economic, social and cultural rights (1966), and those for women (CED AW) and children (CRC).

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns • • • •

•

The work on the right to development from the 1970s on, via a UN General Assembly declaration in 1986, to a new wave of work since the late 1990s. Rights-based approaches to development from the mid- or late 1990s. The basic (human) needs work, mainly in the 1970s and 1980s. The successor capability approach (Sen), human development approach (Haq) and capabilities approach (Nussbaum) from the late 1980s onwards, wings of a cooperative endeavour consolidated recently in a Human D evelopment and Capability Association. The perspective of human security from the mid-1990s. This is less embedded, at least as yet, but has received considerable attention in the last few years, led by the 2003 report Human Security Now (CHS, 2003), as in effect an attempt in the threatening setting of the new millennium to link the perspectives of human rights, needs and human development via the lenses of felt and actual vulnerabilities.

The present chapter looks at the relationship between these discourses, at their potentials and requirements, competitiveness and complementarity. We will group the first three in the list above as a human rights stream, as is standard in the literature, while noting its component strands. As explained below, the other three strands can be grouped together too, as a development set associated with a body like the United Nations D evelopment Programme (UND P). We give particular attention to the discourse of human security since it is the most recent and least familiar and consciously attempts to integrate the other three streams. I have discussed elsewhere its relations to discourses of human development (Gasper and Truong 2005) and needs (Gasper 2005a; 2005b) and draw on that work here. In this chapter I thus give relatively less attention to the discourses of human development and needs, and more attention to the discourse of human rights and its relations, actual or potential, to the others. The second section will raise some key concerns for discourses of human rights (HR) and of human needs (HN). The third section tries to identify the contributions and limitations of human development (HD ) discourse, leading on to an assessment of what if anything human security (HS) discourse adds. The fourth section attempts comparisons and an integrated evaluation. I implicitly draw throughout the article on ideas from Crawford and Murphy concerning determinants and modalities of influence to inform the analysis of strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats. That will lead to identification of some possible directions for follow-up. The four families of discourse form parts of a larger genus: all use the epithet ‘human’. All add a distinctive human interpretation to a pre-existing stream of thought and practice: they propose and stress unities among all human beings, and simultaneously perhaps provide a contrast to (other) animals, let alone inanimate entities; and they stress a moral prioritization of certain capacities and potentials. Human rights is a language of fundamental entitlements, contrasted with the pre-existing language of legally embedded rights, not least of property rights. Human needs discourse tries to provide a basis for this moral prioritization by 330

Human Righ t s, Needs, Devel o pment , Sec ur it y assessing ‘needs for what and for whom?’ and distinguishing the needs of habit or addiction from reasoned and reasonable priority. Human development stands opposed to inhuman development, and the concept of human security stands in contrast to state security and to exclusive attention to security of property or bodily security. Not coincidentally, three of the discourses – human rights, human development, human security – are in an important degree UN discourses, even if far from exclusively so. The language and practices of human rights have spread far down the global ladder. Human development discourse has rapidly extended to national and regional levels, providing through its annual reports a widely adopted language and perspective. While many of the recent human development reports have taken human security (HS) as their theme (Jolly and BasuRay 2007) and there is considerable academic research interest, HS discourse is more complex and more disputed. There are conflicting claimants to the HS label and fundamental doubts about the turn to security language. We add the fourth discourse of human need to this trio because it provides a grounding for the others. Within the genus of human discourses the relationships – like relationships in many other human families – are often surprisingly distant, even cold. Two main subgroupings with more internal interconnection exist within the genus: human rights and the rest. The latter we can call, with Philip Alston and others, the development grouping. In a wider ranging analysis one could, with Uvin and others, distinguish four source communities of practice – socioeconomic development, conflict, humanitarian emergency relief and human rights. Here we mostly look only at partners or reflections of the latter three streams of practice that are found in the socioeconomic development field: human security, basic human needs and rights-based development. Thus, for our purposes, development and rights are the two broader groupings. D espite much work at their interfaces in the past generation, these two remain to a large degree ‘ships passing in the night’ (Alston 2005; see also Uvin 2004; 2006). The picture given of ‘the development enterprise’ in two recent important presentations of rights-based approaches (Gready and Ensor 2005; Uvin 2004), for example, is far too narrow. Even with respect to a project such as the Millennium D evelopment Goals (MD Gs), Alston shows how work on the MD Gs, national and global, has paid very little attention to human rights conventions and theory, and conversely how human rights organizations have remained predominantly detached from perhaps the central contemporary programme in the international development field. MD G monitoring and human rights monitoring mechanisms have largely ignored each other (Alston 2005, 8, 14–25). ‘Making the language and approach of human rights accessible to wider audiences has proved difficult’, 

Uvin presents ‘the development enterprise’ as much younger than that of human rights (2004, 12), because (bizarrely) it is equated by him with international development assistance (ibid., 13). Resources other than those controlled by ‘development agencies’ are even defined as ‘non-development resources’ (ibid., 119). 331

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns admits perhaps the leading figure who is attempting just that, Mary Robinson, the inspiring former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who spearheaded the move of human rights work out of its traditional ruts (Robinson 2004, 868). ‘[W]e are far from arriving at a position where those working in the human rights tradition and those working in the development tradition feel that they speak the same language. If mutual curiosity has increased, confidence is far from being safely established’ (ibid. 2005, 31). Viewed in historical perspective, however, the new half-fullness of the relationship between these streams (see Olowu 2005) may strike the observer even more than the remaining half-emptiness and mutual strangeness. Over more than half a century, the four original pillars of the [UN] Charter (peace, development, human rights, and independence) largely pursued in parallel in the first few decades, came closer together, a remarkable and underemphasised advance. The integration of these important facets of the human challenge may be the most underrecognised achievement of the world organization (Jolly et al. 2005, 12). These intersections have greatly increased from the 1970s, leading to important new thinking within the major development and human rights pillars themselves. Human development discourse has connected to human rights discourse, notably in the Human Development Report 2000 and the spawning of human security discourse. The HDR 2000 presented ‘human development’ as a justification principle for rights and human rights language as an essential format in policy operationalization. Such a linkage could be helpful both for human development work, connecting it to the politically vivid, forceful and institutionally embedded human rights approach; and for human rights discourse, providing it with fuller theoretical grounding and clearer priorities. Leading current formulations of human rights, human development and human needs theory can be seen to have the same structure (see Gasper 2005a; 2005b) with the justification of many claimed human rights to be understood in terms of fulfilment of priority needs. While human needs discourse has been more a part of the second subgrouping (human development thinking), it can play an essential role in connecting the streams (see Galtung 1994) and will be discussed here together with human rights thinking in the second section. In the third section we see how human security discourse thereby builds an alliance between the three older ‘human’ discourses. It uses a human needs framework to provide the focus in prioritization that is required within the very wide reach of the human rights and human development discourses.

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Human Righ t s, Needs, Devel o pment , Sec ur it y

Human Rights and Human Needs: the Importance of Channelling and Partnering the Rights Notion Fundamental Strengths of a Human Rights-Based Approach? Core contributions of a human rights-based approach (HRBA) are: first, to offer a defence for the weak, each and every weakly situated person, counteracting elite dominance (D arrow and Tomas 2005, 489); and second, to ground this defence in fundamental motivating forces: respect for inherent human dignity and – even for people who have lost or never gained dignity in another sense – respect for common humanity, for each and every person. Human rights are a tool for defence of the weak, a tool that derives its instrumental power from the fact that it has independent normative appeal. Ordinary people can and do grasp and use the human rights concept (see Tomas 2005); and the fact that people hold such values makes rights systems an effective policy instrument and driving force. Lawyers typically propose two more core strengths. The third that they repeatedly stress is that the moral claims for defence of the weak and of all persons are embodied in a system of specific criteria, entitlements with carefully specified, intersubjectively stable content (Alston 2005, 760, 782; D arrow and Tomas 2005, 519–520). Non-lawyers highlight instead that the concept of human rights helps to redirect and restructure our attention in policy analysis and action: it changes according to where we look, the questions we ask and how we try to answer them (Uvin 2004, 176, 192; Gasper 2008a). Fourthly, lawyers emphasize that a human rights-based approach connects to the rigour, force and compulsion of law, the machinery of legal decision-making and enforcement wherein rights are clarified (including by specification of dutyholders) and applied. However, argue some others, this orientation to the legal system can instead become a failing. The legal system is inevitably ponderous and remains in practice dominated by the rich, those who can access the courts, hire smart lawyers or buy support in other ways. In addition it might merge the human rights approach into a more general legal language-field of rights within which the rights of most or many humans can become marginalized for the sake of property rights or so-called group rights. While ethical principles need to become embodied, the question is how far legal systems alone can be relied on to embody and apply them. A strength of recent rights-based approaches (RBAs) work is their reduction of the preoccupation with the legal system – ‘the legal reflex’ (Gready and Ensor 2005). RBAs concentrate on research and information provision, education and capacity-building – influencing incentives, motivations and concepts, supporting 

See ICHRP (2005, Chapter II) for a more elaborate comparison along those lines of human rights approaches with human development, good governance and gender equity approaches. It underemphasizes the typical problems in HRAs which we will consider: grounding, prioritization and legalism. 333

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns public debate – and pressure via the political system. Alston considers these new RBAs far more fruitful than more legalistic and lawbook-bound work on the right to development (Alston 2005, Section VI). Seeing rights as goals to be promoted in diverse ways, not only as legal cudgels with which to enforce, leads to more creative thinking: ‘In cases where rights cannot be enforced through the courts [notably because there is not a single clear duty-holder], they can be asserted through other democratic means, based for instance on parliamentary interventions, the electoral process, the media, international solidarity, street action or even civil disobedience’ (D rèze 2005, 58). Many of these methods act through ‘influence on public perceptions of who is entitled to what’ (ibid., 59). The label ‘RBA’ would be unfortunate if it helped to trap the poor into primary reliance on a legal system which they can hardly ever effectively use. ‘Human rightsbased approach(es)’ (HRBAs) is a better label, as used by for example Robinson (2005) and D arrow and Tomas (2005). HRBAs have emerged precisely to correct and override narrower RBAs. The disagreements over the third and fourth proposed strengths of human rights-based approaches, including over the role of legalism, illustrate that there is no single RBA (Mander 2005). Each organization seems to present its own core principles. Both D arrow and Tomas (2005, 471) and Alston (2005, 799ff) in their massive recent surveys, warn of the danger of disillusion with loosely conceptualized and applied RBAs. Besides the issue of legalism, two other fundamental disputes require attention: the handling of trade-offs and setting of priorities and, related to that, the theoretical grounding for human rights claims. We will consider these three areas further after an overview of objections to rights language.

Rights Claims and their Critics We should distinguish: rights language in general; within that, human rights language; and within human rights language, approaches centred on legal rights and broader human rights-based approaches (see Table 20.1). Table 20.1 Realms of rights approaches Rights approaches Law-centred

Not human rights

Human rights

D iverse non-primal legal rights

Human rights law and conventions

Not law-centred Informal non-primal rights

Wider HR-based approaches

Let us note first some criticisms of rights language in general, then of human rights in particular. These concerns lead us to such languages’ need for partner discourses. 334

Human Righ t s, Needs, Devel o pment , Sec ur it y Rights language, in the variants that take rights as primary, central and overriding, has been criticized to some greater or lesser degree from almost all angles in political and social philosophy except that of ‘[l]iberal individualism … to which the theory of rights belongs’ (Almond 1993, 267). Nearly all the critics accept that rights have a role in a political order, but as a derived and more limited tool not as absolute or predominant nor as a foundational principle such as ‘natural rights’ or ‘human rights’. Many utilitarians have taken such a position, for example Bentham in his famous attack of 1795 on natural rights. •

•

•



Economists have traditionally often disliked (human) rights talk: it gets in the way of aggregate utility- (or product-) maximization, and they query who is supposed to pay for these asserted rights (see, for example, views in Frey 1984). Certain leading conservative philosophers, such as Alisdair MacIntyre and Roger Scruton, have been critical of rights formulations, as are some feminists (for example, Hardwig 1990). The Kantian Onora O’Neill (1996) argues that ‘obligations’ is a more basic (and broader) category than rights and gives a more adequate moral basis. (For a rebuttal, see Nussbaum 2006.) Similarly from the Thomist tradition John Finnis (1980) prefers the language of duties to that of rights. Many Marxists consider rights talk as part of an ideology by which an elite in reality grabs resources and excludes others (Buchanan 1982; Lukes 1985). Some radical democratic theorists, too, hold that rights formulations in practice entrench bourgeois power and property. Lawrence Hamilton, a South African political philosopher, attacks the human rights framework as a dead end for justice in his country – one part of a spider’s web of bourgeois liberal thought through which the weak are captured by the strong. Hamilton criticizes a dominant ‘rights-preferences couple’ in ‘liberal political and economic theory and practice that reduces politics to the security of individual human rights, the aggregation of individual preferences, or a contrived combination of both. This reduction excludes the two main components of politics: collective decision determined by the need to act, and collective evaluation determined by the requirement to control and enhance the development and satisfaction of individual human needs’ (Hamilton 2004, 193). Further, although human rights discourse makes a claim for priority status, rights language bears too much the imprint of property rights, and ties fulfilment of priority human needs to the ability to expensively access a remote legal system. That system takes existing property rights as the default case: claims against them must be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt. Basic needs of the majority can thus become downgraded in practice by being stated in the same rights language as that of established property-holding (ibid. 2003a, Conclusion).

See Sumner (2000) for a concise but solid survey of and partial reply to objections. 335

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Some of the criticisms are specific to human rights claims, such as the familiar attacks on their proposed universality. Human rights language is only in part formally established in law, and comprises claims to hold or obtain something because of a person’s sheer status as a human being, thereby overriding if necessary many other possible rights. Freeman calls this a ‘very unsatisfactory formulation’ (2002, 60–61). I would say rather that it is not a complete argument by itself; one has to argue effectively which of the features of being a human imply rights and why, and which rights and with what degree of force (see Josephides 2003). More selective in their target are critics of economic and social rights in particular, whether on utilitarian, conservative or other grounds. One prominent conservative critic was Maurice Cranston. In contrast, many nationalists hold that the international human rights regime is a tool for imperialists to interfere and intervene when it suits them, while ignoring real need most of the time. D iscussing human rights in an international context can render weak states open to intervention and human rights becomes seen as an imperialist discourse – at least by actual or aspirant ruling groups in the South. From the human development stream Amartya Sen wants to loosen up and de-absolutize human rights discourse (see Sen 2004); Martha Nussbaum thinks likewise, based on her intense involvement with the world of American law. At the same time, both now consciously affiliate themselves with the international human rights tradition, in a de-absolutized form ‘the capabilities approach is one species of a human rights approach’ says Nussbaum (2006, 7). Li (2001) considers that Nussbaum’s approach thereby faces the same fundamental challenges as a human rights approach: [O]ver the past decade, in responding to criticisms and doubts, the main architects of the capability theory have gradually moved toward mainstream liberal constitutionalism and the international human rights approach … a number of conceptual difficulties that the international human rights approach faces, such as the lack of specification of correspondent duties, the extensiveness of the list of rights declared ‘universal’ and ‘human’, which thus must all be protected and implemented, and the expensiveness in implementing them, can also be raised about the capability approach. To sum up, disagreements exist on: (1) the status of rights relative to other principles; (2) the content of rights; (3) the relative importance of different rights (human rights can conflict with each other and with other sorts of rights); (4)  

For example, Wood (2003) doubts the relevance of some of the gender and marriage rights charter to poor societies where marriages are a key security arrangement for which there is no alternative. Whereas natural rights typically derived from God, human rights doctrine creates a sort of secular God: ‘we have rights by virtue of being human and once we institute a global legal order we have a kind of global god. Monotheistic colonialism is alive and well’ (Hamilton 2003b, 45). 336

Human Righ t s, Needs, Devel o pment , Sec ur it y the meaning of justice and hence the grounding of rights (disagreements here underlie disagreements on the previous points); and (5) the relative importance and role of different aspects of justice (commutative, procedural, distributive, contributive, retributive). Human rights theory requires then: a grounding, a prioritizing apparatus, much complementing, careful gradation and some de-absolutization. Let us consider in more detail the accusations of legalism, vagueness of grounding and utopianism/absolutism (Robinson 2005 discusses other criticisms.)

Will Democratic Agendas be Sunk or Strengthened by Rights Frameworks? Is a Legalistic Language an Advantage or Not? ‘The concept of rights can be used selfishly, but all concepts can be abused’ (Freeman 2002, 73). We have a choice between saying that human rights is a good concept which can be abused, or that human rights is a concept which can be used well and for good ends but also can be used badly and for bad ends. The advantage of the former stance is that it may better instil confidence and commitment; the advantage of the latter is that we become more self-critical, less self-congratulatory. We saw already a potential structural advantage, the force of legal backing and a structural problem, namely that reliance on the legal system typically favours elites and disfavours those who are remote from and/or distrust the state. ‘This [second part] is a challenge which human rights organisations have only recently understood’ (Robinson 2005, 37). Rights language – including sometimes human rights language as used in practice – is far from necessarily egalitarian. Historically rights language has often been associated with defending privileges or claiming privileges – benefits to be received by some and certainly not by all. Rights language – including the language of fundamental rights – is frequently used to defend immense inequalities and monopolistic practices. So if human rights language is a language of special priority, where do human rights end and other rights begin? Everyone wants to claim priority for their interests. Each sort of claimed right is in practice liable to be defended with the assertion that it represents a human right, as in the argument by Robert Nozick and right-wing libertarians that income taxation represents a violation of fundamental human rights to gain and hold property by fair means, and a violation of a person’s integrity and human right to be treated with utmost respect. Nozick’s libertarian attack on John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, glitzily titled Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), presented anti-egalitarianism as cool, smart and pro-people. Arguments about fair, timeless ‘social contracts’ were opposed by arguments in terms of 

Microsoft’s refusal to give customers the freedom to buy Windows separately from Internet Explorer was defended with use of the language of freedom and rights: it prioritized Microsoft’s freedom to manipulate customers. See for example, ‘A Petition Against the Persecution of Microsoft’, at <www.moraldefense.com>. 337

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns actual historical contracts. Such arguments for the absolute right to hold on to property and experience minimal interference contributed to the 1970s and 1980s rise to dominance of neoliberal and neoconservative views propounded by von Hayek, Friedman, Nozick and many others (see Gasper 1986). This was amongst the reasons why land reform, for example, largely disappeared from the policy agenda. It connects also to the rise of the thinking and practice of ‘intellectual property rights’, the patenting by corporations of what others consider to be a common heritage and the attempts by corporations to limit the use of knowledge that can save the lives of impoverished millions unless they are paid the price that they demand. Even the Bretton Woods institutions now talk about human rights, though when they refer to ‘the rule of law’ they have typically attended only to property rights (Alston 2005, 780). We have to face the question: how far are property rights human rights? To address it we would need to consider the theoretical grounding of human rights claims.

The Grounding and Weight of Human Rights Claims: Prioritizations, Choices, Trade-Offs One cannot by fiat limit ‘human rights thinking’ to UN human rights documents and sister legal statements. It antedates 1948 and, further, the 1948 Universal D eclaration is a list without an explicit theory. Attempts to theorize can lead to somewhat different lists, for example some do not include property rights as a human right, at least not of the same order as others. Property rights are included in the 1948 D eclaration but were excluded from the 1966 Conventions. The assertion of property rights as human rights of equal priority to others undermines redistributive public activity – not merely land reform but also many forms of taxation. A massively wealthy movement mobilized in recent years in the US to abolish inheritance taxation and similar groups have placed income taxation on their target list. D eclarations of normative rights rest on conceptions of values and justice, and in turn on conceptions about other things. Fortunately various different conceptions of values and justice may be consistent with the same declaration of normative rights. This is enormously helpful and has been a reason not to probe into the underlying conceptions. However, there are also major disagreements which force us to probe further. We require a normative grounding in order not only to draw up a list but also interpret and use it: what are priorities when different rights or rights and other values conflict? As human rights leaders like Robinson (2005) and Alston (2005, 802) acknowledge, the tradition has been averse to admitting conflicts of rights. Peter Uvin holds that ‘the human rights community has hardly addressed’ how conflicts between rights should be handled (2004, 86). In practice lawyers and administrators must and do consider such matters, and build up various conventions of practice, but the basis of theory can be weak. One dangerous option is to hold that rights which are given lesser priority in a particular case 338

Human Righ t s, Needs, Devel o pment , Sec ur it y are then ‘not real rights’ (see Gasper 1986). Uvin (2004) looks at prioritization in his final chapter but does not distinguish contingent conflicts, namely those due to current shortage of resources, and inherent conflicts, those that no amount of resources will remove. One possible role of principles is as inspirational maxims, proverbs which one endorses without openly admitting that they are sometimes contradicted by other maxims. They are used as reminders and conflicts are treated as challenges, as spurs to creative improvization and never to admission of constraint. When may one take a step backwards on some valued axis in order to take two steps forward on another axis or later on the same axis? The human rights mainstream seems to say never. Uvin (2004, 151) hallows this as ‘the non-retrogression rule’. Others call it the ‘do no harm principle’. The implicit assumption is that one can and must always find feasible ways of immediately compensating for any retrogression that would otherwise be incurred. Non-inspirational analysts and managers from other traditions consider this absurd: it even jeopardizes, as we saw, most taxation. Robinson (2005, 35ff) accepts that ‘human rights analysts have not thought enough about’ such problems. But D arrow and Tomas take the counteroffensive (2005, 492) and insist that an HRBA in fact forces us to face conflicts. It indeed obliges us to look at costs incurred by individuals and groups, but this is not the whole of the issue. We can be forced to see conflicts, but we may fail to have any system for prioritizing in response to them. Or we may adopt the non-retrogression rule which asserts only one way of dealing with any conflict, the way of full compensation; and which can lead in strange directions when rich and privileged groups – those who are best able to articulate and advocate their interests and operate in systems of law – adopt the languages of absolute respect for persons and of uninfringeable rights in order to defend their holdings. We have here a conflict and trade-off between two styles of practice: an optimistic inspirational quasi-religious style that calls us to join the path of righteousness, and a more prosaic, calculating style. Each has its strengths and appropriate locales. In public and global policy Romantic inspiration is important but will not suffice. Alston, one of the major figures in human rights research, is more hardheaded and critical here than D arrow, Robinson or Uvin: (H)RBAs must acquire priorities, an understanding of the division of mandates and responsibilities, and a grasp of the inevitability of phased change (Alston 2005, 807–8); otherwise they could become a counterproductive theology. Correspondingly they should ally themselves to the MD Gs. ‘In the future, human rights proponents need to prioritise, stop expecting a paradigm shift, and tailor their prescriptions more carefully to address particular situations’ (ibid., 826–7). Some types of need theory, and their offspring in one version of the human security approach, offer a way of thinking, not just a set of labels, to engage in the necessary prioritization.

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns The Importance of Needs Theory, and of the History of Ideas rather than Creation Myths Basic needs normative theory is one systematic way to look at normative foundations, for rights or for any other normative theory. It asks: •

•

What are the requirements for a person to live in a way required by a particular normative theory – for example, to live as an independent, self-reliant, autonomous (self-directing) individual of the sort praised in a Nozick-type rugged individualism? In other words, it argues that each normative theory implies some basic needs. What are the implied requirements that are common to a whole range of normative theories? Some priority needs are found to be the same across a wide range of normative theories. These ones we can confidently call ‘basic needs’, despite the disagreements elsewhere between the theories.

So, looking for foundations for rights (or other normative stances) leads somewhere, says needs theory (see for example Braybrooke 1987; D oyal and Gough 1991; Gasper 2004, Ch. 6; 2007). Conversely, failure to look systematically at foundations and to conceptualize needs carefully can lead to confusion. One common form of confusion arises from failure to distinguish modes of ‘need’ and another comes from presumption that basic needs means a set of commodities that sustain material subsistence. A minimum set of distinctions specifies three modes and two levels. Mode A needs are drives or strong wants, or things without which one suffers; mode B needs are what one requires (S, a satisfier) in order to achieve something else (E, an end); mode C needs (a subset of mode B) are approved requisites for fulfilling approved priority ends (like dignity) (Taylor 1959; D ouglas et al. 1998). Essential requisites (such as water) for strong priority ends (such as life) are candidate human rights. Within modes B and C we must distinguish levels of satisfiers and ends. Obviously not all mode A and mode B needs are mode C needs and candidate human rights; but candidate human rights are mode C needs or the approved priority ends. Michael Freeman cites Jack D onnelly’s statement that ‘the need for dignity rather than needs as such is the basis of human rights’ (Freeman 2002, 65). Freeman queries D onnelly, arguing that ‘the link between human rights and “dignity” is as problematic as the link with “needs”: the right to security of person, for example, might be based on human need or a requirement of dignity’ (ibid.) In reality there is no dichotomy: the (satisfier-level) implications of a requirement of dignity would be one type of (mode C) human need. Thus when Freeman later remarks that ‘[t]he combined use of needs and dignity is implicit in the “capabilities” theory of Martha Nussbaum’ (ibid.), it is not that some of her priority areas are based on needs and some on dignity; they are all, in her view, the needs required for sustaining a life with dignity. Freeman rightly notes: ‘Most people most of the time “need” security, but it is not always needed for a life of dignity; soldiers, for example can lead lives of 340

Human Righ t s, Needs, Devel o pment , Sec ur it y dignity without as much security as civilians normally require’ (ibid.) From this we might conclude that soldiers have less right to security or have waived that right; that dignity is not the only priority end or that rights to security are grounded in particular (E-level) needs, whether for dignity or for being able to live as the type of agent assumed by whichever moral theory is adopted. That not all needs establish rights (for example, some needs, such as friendship, ‘would impose unreasonable demands on others’ (ibid.) if stated as rights) does not gainsay that ‘[b]ehind human rights are freedoms and needs so fundamental that their denial puts human dignity itself at risk’ (Goldewijk and Fortman 1999, 117). The creation myths of both human rights-based approaches (HRBA) and the human development approach (HD A) present basic needs theory as a primitive forerunner: technocratic, top-down, commodity-focused, a staging post on the path to right thinking. This sits uneasily with the fact that leading basic needs theorists – like Mahbub ul Haq, Paul Streeten, Frances Stewart, Johan Galtung – were also leaders of HD A or HRBA. Peter Uvin is representative here in describing the basic needs approach – which he considers still tacitly predominant in development work – as follows: ‘All human beings, it is argued, have basic material needs for food, material, and shelter, and all development activities and policies should first of all promote the satisfaction of these basic needs; only after that is done should more social and psychological needs be addressed’ (Uvin 2004, 34, emphasis added). This suggests scant knowledge of the work of leading basic needs theorists, and of the oft-discussed contrast between the ‘basic material needs’ and ‘basic human needs’ streams (see Hettne 1982; 1990). The reductionist broadbrush treatment contrasts with Uvin’s concern to tease out variants and alternatives within human rights approaches. Reductionism becomes sloppiness when Uvin returns to the theme in his Chapter 4. If inmates of refugee camps have better indicators for nutrition, morbidity, mortality and shelter than before they entered the camps, then according to him ‘the basic needs and even “human development” approach as implemented by the main development actors’ (2004, 123) would conclude these people are ‘more developed’ than before. He remarks that: We intuitively feel that this is nonsense, of course. When people are deprived of their freedom, live in constant fear, cannot move or work as they wish, and are cut off from the communities and the lands they care about, development has emphatically not taken place. Maslow is dead; there are no basic needs (ibid.). The human development approach would say that the range of valued freedoms determines the meaning of ‘development’, and typically includes mobility, community membership and participation, freedom from fear, freedom to decide, and so on. Most 

Boulding, Galtung, Haq, Stewart and Streeten, for example – let alone Braybrooke, D eci and Ryan, D oyal and Gough, Maslow, Max-Neef, Penz and Wisner – are all absent from Uvin’s bibliography. 341

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns basic needs theorists would say that these features are basic needs, as determinable using many possible decision criteria or procedures. D oyal and Gough’s Theory of Need, for example, derives the features as implications of a priority commitment to the ability to function effectively as a member of one’s society. Uvin’s ringing assertion that there are no basic needs could lead us towards the relativism of pure consumer society where my preference for a fifth home is morally indistinguishable from your wish for a first, and the decision procedure employed is to let us compete for housing in the market. We see here a link between the weakly elaborated theoretical basis of much rights analysis and its problems in prioritization. Eventually in the final few pages of his book, when seeking priorities, Uvin rapidly improvises a sort of basic needs position under another name. To ‘do at least something well’, development funders should engage … in each country in only three or four sectors, areas or goals, while staying entirely out of all the rest. These sectors could be chosen according to the specific and urgent needs of each country, or they could be set in a fixed manner for the whole world – there are advantages and disadvantages to each system … A strong a priori [sic] would exist in favor of investing in education, nutrition, and health, as well as in doing so in rights terms. In other words, this approach would then amount to a basic rights approach, in which the international community seeks to guarantee every single person in the world access to the key elements of the right to life (Uvin 2004, 199, emphases added). This sounds very familiar to basic needs analysts. In contrast to HRBA and HD A discourses, international humanitarianism has always openly affirmed and centred on concepts of need. ‘At each stage in its evolution, humanitarianism has forged and then relied upon consensus on core political values: people in need should be protected from life-threatening harm (the principle of humanity); aid should be distributed solely according to need (the principle of impartiality)’ (O’Brien 2005, 202, emphases added). Needs discourse has been important too in analyses of conflict, and central in the disciplines of social policy where ‘needs assessment’ is a continuing preoccupation. None of this implies that needs discourse is without major tensions and limitations (see Gasper 2004). It suggests, however, that cooperative alliances and mutual learning are the appropriate form of relationship between these various ‘human’ discourses.

Human Development and Human Security Human Development Approach – Key Features The human development approach (HD A) – rooted in UND P and led by Mahbub ul Haq, Amartya Sen and their associates – has been a central part of the move beyond a dominant focus on economic output and economic growth. Gross domestic product 342

Human Righ t s, Needs, Devel o pment , Sec ur it y (GD P) is a measure of monetized activity, not of human well-being. HD A stresses the lack of adequate connection between levels of monetized activity and levels of well-being: there are many other determinants of well-being, and frequently weak or unreliable or perverse links to well-being from economic growth. Part of GD P’s continuing but unacknowledged attraction to national elites may be that it also measures power over others: the power of governments to acquire weaponry and military capability; the power of elites to acquire property, land, real estate, rivals’ listed companies; the power to be heard, to travel, to communicate; powers to obtain, vet and disseminate research and information; the power to buy control of mass media and buy influence more generally (sometimes with legislators, judges, police and politicians who are in search of funds). Let us look here at what HD A attends to instead, including its normative specifics, and both its contributions and gaps. I will comment (based on Gasper and Truong 2005) on the approach of UND P and its associates, not on Nussbaum’s distinctive version. •

• •

•

•

• •

Human development thinking has broadened the range of objectives that are routinely considered in development debate and planning, and it reduces GD P from an end to instead just one possible means or instrument. Specific objectives are ideally to be derived through reasoned and public reflection. It has espoused and exemplified a form of ‘joined-up thinking’ which is not misleadingly restricted by national and conventional disciplinary boundaries. HD A also takes a step towards what might be termed ‘joined-up feeling’, for, as in human rights philosophy, the field of reference is all humans irrespective of their location in the world. However, although it has a serious concern for equity, Haq’s HD A did not establish guarantees for individuals, in contrast to the human rights tradition (see Jonsson, 2005, 59–60.) Further, HD A presumes rather than directly constructs and succours a motivational basis for such concern. D oes it preach only to the converted? Underlying the previous two points, while Sen and Haq sought to move beyond mainstream economics, they aimed to bring most of its practitioners with them. The previous subtitle of the Journal of Human D evelopment – ‘Alternative Economics in Action’ – reflected this disciplinary heritage and loyalty. Sen’s capability approach and the HD A mainstream thus still bear some economics style features which many other audiences can find problematic. The slogans of ‘development as the expansion of capabilities’ and ‘development as freedom’ can be turned into a justification for consumerism.

Ananta Giri has argued that Sen’s work lacks an adequate conception of personhood, personal growth and human agency. ‘D evelopment … also means self-development on the part of the free agents where they do not just assert the 343

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns self-justificatory logic of their own freedom but are willing to subject it to a selfand mutual criticism’ (Giri 2000, 1011). Further, concerning a theory of mobilization and action we have to move beyond ‘the technocratic approach to social policy in which rich nice people do nice things to poor nice people’ (Wood, 2003), and which assumes that those two are the only important social categories. The experience of independent India shows that formal political democracy certainly reduces famine but does not eliminate it; marginal minorities continue to be ignored. The struggle and empowerment orientations from human rights work are needed. For deepening its motivational basis and defence of individuals, its conceptions of personhood, self-development, public action and political struggle, HD A has stood to benefit from the human rights tradition, as well as from the full resources of the basic human needs stream and well-being research. These moves have been underway from the time that HD A was formulated and have involved its founders, Haq, Sen and Nussbaum, and back-up from the institutions they have fostered. In particular, Haq and Sen tackled parts of this agenda in their entry into human security discourse.

Human Security: Concept and Discourse; the Relation to HDA We saw how human development discourse decisively widened the range of development policy concerns beyond economic growth. Mahbub ul Haq’s concept of ‘human security’, introduced in the Human D evelopment Reports of 1993 and 1994 similarly tries to humanize the treatment of security. He took the distinction between the security of states and the security of persons further by re-visioning the latter as not merely the physical safety of individuals but more broadly their ability to secure and hold basic goods. When Mary Robinson (2005) now talks of human security she refers primarily to the ability to secure basics: health, safety and education. The 2003 report prepared for the UN system by the Commission on Human Security, Human Security Now (also known as the Ogata-Sen commission report) combines these elements to clarify the human security concept. Within (A) the widened range of concerns, the human development realm of reasoned freedoms, the concept provides (B) a focus on priorities, on basic human needs including a concern with the physical security of persons (which was already present in the UND P definition of human development); and (C) a concern for stability, not only averages and trends. Haq and Sen’s human security discourse is broader than a single concept. It synthesizes concerns from basic needs, human development and human rights. The other elements of this human security (HS) discourse are: (D ) a normative focus on individual persons’ lives; (E) an insistence on basic rights for all; and (F) an explanatory agenda that stresses the nexus between freedom from want and indignity and freedom from fear (Gasper 2005a). Table 20.2 connects this itemization of features to the earlier characterization of human development discourse.

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Human Righ t s, Needs, Devel o pment , Sec ur it y Table 20.2 Comparison of human development and human security approaches HD

HS

1. Broader range of objectives than GNP

[D ] Normative focus on individuals’ lives

2. Focus on reasoned freedoms

[A] Focus on reasoned freedoms

7. A more generalised and economicsoriented language

[B] In contrast, a focus on basic needs

5. Serious concern for equity but without guarantees for individuals

[E] In contrast, an insistence on basic rights for all, and … (see below) [C] A concern for stability as well as for levels

3. Joined-up thinking

[F] Nexus between freedoms from want and indignity and freedom from fear

4. Joined-up feeling but … (see below)

[G] Joined-up feeling (cosmopolitan concern)

5. Motivational basis is presumed rather than constructed

D , B, E −> stronger motivational basis, mobilising attention and concern, and sustaining [G]

Overall: The human security discourse is a discourse for getting priority, and priorities, in national and international policy … The HS discourse includes, besides the concept, strong attention to the interconnections between conventionally separated spheres, which helps it to link diverse organisational [and disciplinary] worlds; and a motivating focus on human vulnerability and the human rights that flow for every human being from basic human needs (Gasper, 2005a, 241–2). The HS discourse both rests on the basic human needs work in which Haq was prominent, adds to it, and shows the consistency of the human development, human needs and human rights languages. For the types of ‘boundary work’ which the concept and discourse attempt intellectually, emotionally, ethically and politically, there are threats as well as opportunities implicit in security language. The ‘human security’ label well matches the contents and purpose of the concept and discourse but it is competed for by national security studies and the associated policy agenda is at risk of distortion by the psychological insecurities of the rich. We discuss this later.

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns The Human Security Framework in Use Jolly and BasuRay (2007) review various criticisms of the UND P-Haq treatment of human security, in the light of 13 examples of national Human D evelopment Reports (NHD Rs) which have taken human security as the lead theme. These cover a wide range of countries, from Latvia to the Philippines to Mozambique. Has the approach added value? They itemize the criticisms (ibid., 459; italicized below) and comment on each in turn. •

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•

‘Human security, they [the critics] argue, merely involves renaming problems which have already been recognized in other contexts and which already have perfectly good names. What is gained by combining them together under a new label?’ Jolly and BasuRay find significant benefits from ‘joined-up thinking’. ‘Almost all the reports develop links between [physical] security, human security and development as an integrated whole’ (ibid., 462). The reports generate significantly different priorities between countries and compared to what outsiders might have expected in advance. ‘Human Security does not have any definite parameters, therefore anything and everything could be considered as a risk to security.’ Finding: ‘The human security approach strives to contextualize this understanding of security in order to develop appropriate policy responses. The NHD R reports show that such a process is entirely possible, and reveals a far more comprehensive picture of the security needs and situations of individuals than a state-based approach would do’ (ibid., 463). Again, in effect, the argument is that joined-up thinking better reflects reality and leads us helpfully to seeing things afresh. ‘Human security, when broadened to include issues like climate change and health, complicates the international machinery for reaching decisions or taking action in relation to the threats identified.’ Jolly and BasuRay respond: ‘D ecision-making and implementation of a much broader approach will neither be easy nor always fit easily within conventional thinking and procedures. On the other hand, if the causes of insecurity have broadened, if new issues of human security have displaced traditional threats, it would be absurd to continue along old routes, rather than finding new ways to deal with new problems’ (ibid.). The NHD Rs illustrate how this can fruitfully be done. O’Brien (2006) argues similarly with specific respect to climate change, showing how the focus on persons helpfully breaks away from conventional nation-centred analyses. ‘Human security risks engaging the military in issues best tackled through nonmilitary means.’ Jolly and BasuRay found no support for this from the NHD Rs. They note that the UN and many supporters of a human security approach emphatically oppose the (military) securitization of development as typically counterproductive and show in detail how the approach instead generates alternative policy implications. ‘Human security under the UN risks raising hopes about the UN’s capacity, which it cannot fulfil.’ The study is more sanguine. It dispels the notion that an HS 346

Human Righ t s, Needs, Devel o pment , Sec ur it y approach implies ‘centralized decision-making – let alone taking all issues to the Security Council’ (ibid., 469). Human security analysis and programming, like human rights analysis, will not be limited to a single milieu. Jolly and BasuRay conclude ‘that the UND P concept of human security, when applied at national level, is both robust in showing answers to these criticisms and operationally useful in identifying policy measures and action to tackle serious problems of insecurity of people within the countries concerned’ (ibid., 459). Seen from some other corners, the UND P version of human security discourse may not only be viewed less favourably, it may not register at all. Almost none of the human rights authors whose work has been used in this article seem to give it any attention. They work instead with a concept of physical security of persons.

Assessment of HR, HD and HS Discourses: Towards a SWOT Analysis Let us review and compare the policy discourses we have discussed with special reference to human rights-based approaches and the Haq-Sen conception of human security. My intent is not to fashion a superdiscourse that serves all purposes best, but rather to further mutual insight and cooperation. Multiple intellectual and policy communities operating in a variety of niches across complex and diverse social, political and operational environments are each busy with their own particular tasks and challenges. We need not think of intellectual unification, but can promote more fruitful exchange, giving attention to respective strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). Human rights discourse has enormous strengths. It appears readily understandable and near universally acceptable as a format by ordinary people as well as officially by governments. The worldwide Voices of the Poor study generates a set of priorities close to the Universal D eclaration of Human Rights, suggest both James Wolfensohn (2005) and D arrow and Tomas (2005). Further in operational terms HR discourse provides a rallying call and a set of benchmarks which have definite, specific content, and that do not allow the normative thrust to dissolve into nothing. It is connected to a vast legal apparatus and is yet at the same time more struggle-oriented than most development discourse. As Wood reminds us (2003), typically the poor must confront the privileged and act with strength in order to be able to turn claimed or declared rights into delivered, honoured entitlements. Human rights discourse has also had serious shortcomings and dangers, as mentioned in the second section of this chapter. The weapon of struggle can become a weapon of struggle for privilege. The tactical vagueness around the justification 

See, for example, the valuable surveys by Marks (2005) and Andreassen and Marks (2006). 347

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns of human rights can sometimes become a major problem in the face of conflicting interpretations and limited resources. A rights approach may steer and constrain action by reliance on an enormously costly and remote legal system. However, only HR approaches which centre on the legal system can be stifled in the legal embrace. Characteristic of recent human rights-based approaches is that they seek to avoid this. Urban Jonsson argues as follows: There is an emerging consensus that HRBAP [a human rights-based approach to programming] has significant advantages compared to basic needs and human development approaches to programming … 1. Increased accountability as a result of explicitly defined claim-duty relationships. These are different from entitlements which do not identify any specific duty bearer. A duty is also different from a promise or an interest. 2. HRBAP makes most good programming practice obligatory, and not just optional (2005, 59–60). In these first two features we see a sort of management thinking added to ethical aspirations (see also ICHRP 2005). He continues: ‘3. HRBAP offers better protection of people who are poor by ruling out trade-offs that are harmful to them … HRBAP, therefore, pays more attention to exclusion, discrimination, disparities and injustice, and emphasizes basic causes’ (ibid., 60). As we saw, this insistence structures planning and policy assessment so as to put an onus on creativity to find ways forward that do not harm poor people, rather than structuring assessment so as to easily permit sacrifice of the poor. It leaves some difficulties that we have observed. While the above points are characteristic of all human rights approaches, point 4 made by Jonsson is more characteristic of HRBA: it aims to engage the power of the law but not rely on ‘the legal reflex’. In the sixth and final point below we will see that it still aims very high. 4. HRBAP focuses on legal and institutional reform, and promotes the rule of law … In HRBAP, justice is seen as a social process, not just a legal one … 6. In a human rights approach to development, development assistance can no longer be based on charity or solidarity only; it will be a result of national and international obligations (ibid.). Jonsson would likely agree with Gready and Ensor’s judgement that ‘[n]ot only are human rights possibly reinventing development, but development has the potential to reinvent human rights’ (Gready and Ensor 2005, 14). The tendency in his presentation though, is to see the issue as either/or – choose this discourse or that – not in terms of complementarity and of distinct roles in distinct niches. Rights-based approaches are easy to elaborate on paper. In practice no mechanical project planning package will be adequate (Uvin 2004, Chapter 5). How, for example, do we choose a manageable focus within a ‘joined-up thinking’ which seems to indicate connections of everything to everything else? Here Sen’s entitlements analysis has been one major and acknowledged inspiration and 348

Human Righ t s, Needs, Devel o pment , Sec ur it y exemplar for HRBA work. Not all that work, however, shows familiarity with the relevant literature and tools (see Uvin 2004, 161ff). Uvin argues elsewhere that Sen’s notion of development as freedom is beloved in aid agencies because it combines uplifting talk with no specific operational commitments (ibid., 126). Yet what he sketches briefly himself for tracing causes and effects in terms of human rights impacts treads just the sort of path that Sen’s entitlements analysis opened up (see D rèze and Sen 1989; Gasper 2008a). If ‘[a]n RBA is about promoting the establishment and strengthening of formal and informal, legal and nonlegal mechanisms of creating and enforcing claims’ (Uvin 2004, 182), then it is the daughter or younger sister of entitlements analysis (see Gasper 1993). Insofar as HRBAs centre on political struggle, not legal claims, they may indeed go further; with human rights seen as mental tools that provide direction, moral energy and motivation, but never a substitute for political struggle (Uvin 2004, 176). Rights plus empowerment create entitlements. Compared to the human development approach (HD A), human rights approaches provide stronger motivating force and greater guarantees for individuals. Their roots in natural rights argumentation provide intrinsic as well as instrumental arguments for rights (see Gready and Ensor 2005). The HD A, including entitlements and capability analysis, has however provided a framework for joined-up thinking that rights approaches require, plus more willingness and facility to engage with the frequent inevitability of trade-offs, partly thanks to its roots in basic needs theory. If basic needs, too, become defined very extensively and as absolute rights, essential and indivisible, then the problem re-emerges. Human security discourse confronts head-on the importance of prioritization. It has several strengths arising out of its attempt to synthesize and undertake ‘boundary work’ at the interfaces of needs, rights, peace and freedoms. We can identify and cultivate a range of strategies incorporated in HS discourse, seen as a discourse in politics: •

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First, the ethical appeal to human sympathy and solidarity (asking ‘whose security?’), including both justice/fairness concerns and virtue/solidarity concerns: ‘joined-up feeling’. Compared to HD A the human security discourse may have greater motivating power through its focus on substantive priority areas. Further, the focus on such issues – of violence, disease, trafficking and so on – may also produce richer and more probing analyses than in some HD A work; motivation enriches analysis as well as action. Its probing of the roots of national and global tensions and conflicts provides arguments to the rich and privileged for change on grounds of prudence, not only (but also) on grounds of justice and sympathy. This ‘joined-up thinking’ raises questions about the viability of a gated enclave society and asks ‘Will action X really increase your longer-term security?’ D rawing on human development research and the growing tide of well-being work, the human security approach at the same time reconsiders the nature of well-being and therefore of prudence and self-interest, asking what real 349

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns

•

•

human interests are, which routes promote them and which fail to do so and in fact endanger them. How are those four types of probing undertaken and communicated? By joined-up talking, ‘boundary work’, that seeks long-term influence on mental frameworks by using new and old professional networks. But in addition, HS work contains the struggle orientation of providing and employing tools for establishing and demanding accountability; notably via human rights law, the MD Gs, the SPHERE convention, and so on.

There are continuing worries over human security discourse. D o we not have enough languages already? Is this one not too vague, too broad-ranging, too overlapping and competitive with other languages? I suggest elsewhere that this is not so (Gasper 2005a; 2008b). Further, however, does adoption of the ‘security’ label make us fight on the wrong terrain? The danger in boundary work is of conceding too much, in order to be heard. Lakoff advises: ‘D on’t think of an elephant!’: To negate a frame is to accept that frame … To carry out the instruction ‘Don’t think of an elephant’ you have to think of an elephant. Rebuttal is not reframing. You have to impose your own framing before you can successfully rebut. The facts themselves won’t set you free. You have to frame facts properly before they can have the meaning you want them to convey (2002, 419–20). D oes taking over the ‘security’ label render the human security approach too capturable by the fears and agendas of the rich? Part of HS strategy has been to make the rich see that war, disease and insecurity are often promoted by some aspects of their own present postures. Unfortunately the psychic fears of the rich are not well correlated with objective measures of security/insecurity. Heightened fears may contribute to a search for psychic security through group affiliation and ‘othering’: the mental creation and real exclusion of ‘the other’. A short response to these worries is that human security discourse needs to continue being partnered by human rights approaches and human development analysis. A supplementary longer answer could run as follows: the anti-terror agenda is already with us, and the question is how to counter its predominating mindset. It is hard to see how one can leave for others the key terrain and rhetorical trump card of ‘security’, just as we cannot abandon the key discursive terrains of ‘development’, ‘human’ and freedom’. Sen’s success has been by taking freedom seriously, always asking: whose freedom? What are the preconditions for meaningful freedom? What balance of different freedoms? Similarly with ‘security’, we have constantly to ask: whose security (including via applying joined-up feeling)? And will such-and-such measures by the rich really increase their security (joined-up thinking)? One aim is to humanize and influence the military and security worlds, through wider thinking and feeling, induced by direct communication and through feeding public pressure. As Caroline Thomas (2004) remarked, this strategy rests on a hypothesis which is in the process of being tested. Clearly, human security discourse should be extended

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Human Righ t s, Needs, Devel o pment , Sec ur it y to deal systematically with subjective insecurity. Since security is both objective and subjective, HS discourse may presently walk on only one leg. A second reason for more attention to emotions and motivations is to ground and sustain ‘joined-up feeling’. HS work contains a methodological gap regarding building and maintenance of concern. It requires a methodological broadening to partner its broadened scope in terms of themes and sectors. This calls for methods from the arts and humanities, including methods with emotional depth such as life narrative and intimate studies of life spheres. Schaffer and Smith (2004) argue that there are major interconnections between the rise of human rights discourse and the parallel rise of accounts of individual lives. We need to deepen the understanding of and feeling for ‘human’, not only deepen the analysis of development and of security. This connects us to a bigger agenda of human development, such as in Nussbaum’s work. For what, let us suppose, if people show little interest in their contemporaries and in future generations? Both ethical appeals and prudence appeals involve trying to reframe the way that privileged people conventionally think, including reconfiguring how they think about ‘self’, ‘us’, ‘interests’ and therefore ‘self-interest’. Human Security Now spells out such a policy and research agenda (CHS 2003, 122–42), including for education on human rights, shared human identity and diverse social identities, interdependence and mutual respect – education that should include ‘the police, the armed forces, private security forces and others with access to the means of coercive force’ (ibid.). Human security discourse brings in the themes of ‘caring systems’ – examination of how far principles of care can be embodied in welfare systems at levels other than the family – and ‘well-being regimes’ (Wood and Newton 2005), going beyond the study of ‘welfare regimes’ based on intra-North comparisons (for example, the US, Germany, Scandinavia) to a more comprehensive examination of the systems, extant or conceivable, that promote or, especially, prevent well-being. The human security thrust initiated by Haq and sustained by figures like Jolly and organizations like UNICEF has perhaps its largest current expression in the MD Gs. The MD Gs are manifestly crude and top-down targets. Their rationale appears to be political, as accountable commitments, with accountability both domestically and internationally. Haq was not a patient man. He wished to set definite targets against which those in authority would be held accountable. If the targets work directly, well and good; if the targets are not achieved the implicit (‘win/win’) hypothesis was that this would bring down a cleansing public wrath – with a gamble that it does not instead lead to total disillusion. How good or bad the MD Gs are as an operationalization of a human security agenda is open to debate and experience. They are only one of the possible means for pursuing it. Alston calls both for enrichment of MD G work by ideas and inputs from human rights bodies, and for focusing scattered human rights work by reference to the MD Gs. He adjudges that the MD Gs have better potential to become customary international law than do the full international human rights (IHRs) package (2005, 773). Human rights purists attack the MD Gs for being too narrow (not covering all the stated IHRs) and too minimal, which is the opposite of the widespread claim by others that they are unrealistic and unattainable. These critics ignore the issues 351

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns of necessary prioritization and coalition building around targets that can motivate, that stretch but do not strain to breaking point. Further work on the various human discourses’ respective roles and complementarity can investigate to which organizational and discursive niches, levels or functions particular discourses and variants best fit. Some discourses are more global-level; some discourses might fit better with, or require adaptation to, another level and niche: national, local, organizational, household or personal. With respect, for example, to the vital interface between human rights and property rights, human rights discourses have to mould the policy contexts and practical contexts in which property rights are interpreted and applied. The principle of non-retrogression has to be refined and focused. Further, each of the discourses possesses considerable openness of meaning and contains various potentials. We have to study the usages in practice and the practices in use. A more detailed intellectual history of, for instance, the various notions of ‘rights-based approach’ might yield interesting insights. We do not face either/or choices between these discourses, but instead a need for effective alliances within a family of valuable discourses based on cooperation and mutual learning. These can build a bigger picture, an ecumenism in place of sectarianism. D isagreements can be valuable provided they drive investigation rather than close it off.10

References Almond, B. (1993), ‘Rights’, in Singer, P. (ed.), A Companion to Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell), 259–69. Alston, P. (2005), ‘Ships Passing in the Night: The Current State of the Human Rights and D evelopment D ebate seen through the Lens of the Millennium D evelopment Goals’, Human Rights Quarterly 27:3, 755–829. — and Robinson, M. (eds) (2005), Human Rights and Development: Towards Mutual Reinforcement (New York: Oxford University Press). Andreassen, B., and Marks, M. (eds) (2006), Development as a Human Right (Cambridge, MA: Harvard School of Public Health). Braybrooke, D . (1987), Meeting Needs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Buchanan, A. (1982), Marx and Justice: The Radical Critique of Liberalism (London: Methuen).



Some valuable integrated perspectives for analysis and policy already exist. For example, D avid Held’s ‘Global Covenant’ project matches human security (2004, xiii, 110–11, 148, 174–5) and human rights (2004, 56, 125, 137, 170 ff) frameworks. 10 This chapter is a revised and shortened version of Working Paper 445, Institute of Social Studies (The Hague). 352

Human Righ t s, Needs, Devel o pment , Sec ur it y Commission on Human Security (CHS) (2003), Human Security Now (New York: UN Secretary General’s Commission on Human Security), . Crawford, N.C. (2002), Argument and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). D arrow, M., and Tomas, A. (2005), ‘Power, Capture and Conflict: A Call for Human Rights Accountability in D evelopment Cooperation’, Human Rights Quarterly 27:2, 471–538. D ouglas, M., et al. (1998), ‘Human Needs and Wants’, in Rayner, S., and Malone, E. (eds), Human Choice and Climate Change, Volume 1: The Societal Framework (Columbus, OH: Battelle Press), 195–263. D oyal, L., and Gough, I. (1991), A Theory of Need (London: Macmillan). D rèze, J. (2005), ‘D emocracy and the Right to Food’, in Alston and Robinson (eds). — and Sen, A. (1989), Hunger and Public Action (Oxford: Clarendon). Finnis, J. (1980), Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon). Freeman, M. (2002), Human Rights: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Cambridge: Polity). Frey, R.G. (ed.) (1984), Utility and Rights (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Galtung, J. (1994), Human Rights in Another Key (Cambridge: Polity). Gasper, D . (1986), ‘D istribution and D evelopment Ethics’, in Apthorpe, R., and Krahl, A. (eds), Development Studies: Critique and Renewal (Leiden: Brill). — (1993), ‘Entitlements Analysis: Relating Concepts and Contexts’, Development and Change 24:4, 679–718. — (2004), The Ethics of Development: From Economism to Human Development (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). — (2005a), ‘Securing Humanity – Situating “Human Security” as Concept and D iscourse’, Journal of Human Development 6:2, 221–45. — (2005b), ‘Needs and Human Rights’, in van den Anker, C., and Smith, R. (eds), The Essentials of Human Rights (London: Hodder & Stoughton). — (2007), ‘Conceptualising Human Needs and Wellbeing’, in Gough, I., and McGregor, J. (eds), Wellbeing in Developing Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). — (2008a), ‘From Hume’s Law to Policy Analysis for Human D evelopment’, Review of Political Economy 20:2, 233–56. — (2008b), ‘The Idea of Human Security’, Garnet Working Paper 28/08, . — and Truong, T. (2005), ‘D eepening D evelopment Ethics: From Economism to Human D evelopment to Human Security’, European Journal of Development Research 17:3, 372–84. Giri, A.K. (2000), ‘Rethinking Human Well-Being: A D ialogue with Amartya Sen’, Journal of International Development 12:7, 1003–1018. Goldewijk, B.K., and Fortman, B. de Gaay (1999), Where Needs Meet Rights (Geneva: WCC Publications).

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Gready, P. and Ensor, J. (eds) (2005), Reinventing Development: Translating RightsBased Approaches from Theory into Practice (London: Zed Books). Hamilton, L. (2003a), The Political Philosophy of Needs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). — (2003b), ‘Needs, States and Markets: D emocratic Sovereignty against Imperialism’, Theoria 102, 17–47. — (2004), ‘The Political Philosophy of Needs and Weak States’, in Ayogu, M., and Ross, D . (eds), Development Dilemmas (London: Routledge). Hardwig, J. (1990), ‘Should Women Think in Terms of Rights?’, in Sunstein, C. (ed.), Feminism and Political Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Held, D . (2004), Global Covenant (Cambridge: Polity). Hettne, B. (1982), Development Theory and the Third World (Stockholm: SAREC). — (1990), Development Theory and the Three Worlds (Harlow: Longman). International Council on Human Rights Policy (ICHRP) (2005), Local Government and Human Rights: Doing Good Service (Geneva: International Council on Human Rights Policy). Jolly, R., and BasuRay, D . (2007), ‘Human Security: National Perspectives and Global Agendas’, Journal of International Development 19:4, 457–72. Jolly, R., Emmerij, L., and Weiss, T. (2005), The Power of UN Ideas: Lessons from the First 60 Years (New York: UN Intellectual History Project, CUNY ). Jonsson, U. (2005), ‘A Human Rights-Based Approach to Programming’, in Gready and Ensor (eds). Josephides, L. (2003), ‘The Rights of Being Human’, in Ashby-Wilson, R., and Mitchell, J. (eds), Human Rights in Global Perspective (London: Routledge). Klotz, A. (1995), Norms in International Relations: The Struggle against Apartheid (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Lakoff, G. (2002), Moral Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Li, X. (2001), ‘Review of Nussbaum’s Women and Human Development’, <www. development­ethics.org>. Lukes, S. (1985), Marxism and Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Mander, H. (2005), ‘Rights as Struggle: Towards a More Just and Humane World’, in Gready and Ensor (eds). Marks, S. (2005), ‘The Human Rights Framework for D evelopment: Seven Approaches’, in Sengupta, A., Basu, M., and Negi, A. (eds), Reflections on the Right to Development (D elhi: Sage). Max-Neef, M. (1989), ‘Human-Scale D evelopment’, Development Dialogue 1:1, 5–81. Murphy, C. (2005), Globalization, Institutions and Development (London: Routledge). Nozick, R. (1974), Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books). Nussbaum, M. (2006), Frontiers of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). O’Brien, K. (2006), ‘Are We Missing the Point? Global Environmental Change as an Issue of Human Security’, Global Environmental Change 16, 1–3. O’Brien, P. (2005), ‘Rights-Based Approaches to Aid Politicization in Afghanistan’, in Gready and Ensor (eds).

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21 Environmental Justice: National and International D imensions Ruchi Anand

There is ample evidence that uncovers the disproportionate ways in which lowincome communities and people of color the world over have had to bear a greater share of the serious ‘side-effects’, that is, environmental and health risks, that accompany developmental projects. These are also the people that are distanced from the political quarters where policy decisions are taken and power rests. For time immemorial, the poor of the world have helplessly witnessed the ruthless dumping of locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) such as garbage, toxic waste, incinerators, smelters, sewage treatment plants, chemical industries, highways and similar polluting facilities without any outcry but a sense of helplessness. This scenario took a revolutionary turn with the onset of the movement for environmental justice in the US that took root in the early 1980s. The essence of the claim made by the environmental justice movement is that low-income minority persons and people of color have to bear disproportional environmental burdens in the form of toxic wastes, polluted air and water and unsafe and dirty jobs, for example. The environmental justice movement in the US redefined environmental protection as a basic right, with a clearly stated goal of eliminating unequal enforcement of environmental, civil rights and public health laws without regard to race, color, national origin or income (Bullard et al. 2007). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its ‘Title VI’, which prohibits the use of federal funds to discriminate



Robert D . Bullard, also known as the father of environmental justice, is the Ware D istinguished Professor of Sociology and D irector of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. Bullard has authored many books dealing with sustainable development, environmental racism, urban land use, industrial facility siting, community reinvestment, housing, transportation, climate justice, emergency response, smart growth and regional equity. He is currently working on a book titled Deadly Waiting Game Beyond Hurricane Katrina: Government Response, Unnatural Disasters, and African Americans (New York University Press, forthcoming).

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns based on race, color and national origin, became important tools in environmental justice litigation. This chapter seeks to examine whether the lens of environmental justice, as used at the national level in the US, provides a useful theoretical framework to understand international environmental politics at the international level where ‘the principal fissure is between the developed and developing world’ (Hurrell and Kingsbury 1992, 39). Are developing countries victims of procedural and distributive justice just as low-income and people of color are in the US? Can parallels be drawn? Can we even be asking questions regarding justice at the international level, the same way we do at the national level? The second section will detail the beginnings of the environmental justice movement in the US; the third section will discuss the parallels that may be drawn between the national and international versions of environmental justice; and the fourth section concludes on a rather pessimistic note; that is, while principles and concepts of environmental justice exist theoretically at the international level, on a more practical, realistic level, justice becomes a function of the will of the powerful countries.

Environmental Justice at the National Level The beginnings of the environmental justice movement in the US is often traced to 1982 when the Environmental Protection Agency, the State of North Carolina and a hazardous waste generation firm forwarded a proposal for making Warren County the site for a landfill (Anand 2004, 11). One of the poorest localities in the state, Warren County was 65 per cent African-American. The State government decided that 6,000 truckloads of soil covered with toxic PCBs would be dumped in Warren County in a newly constructed landfill for hazardous wastes. This landfill was in the very small community of Afton, which was 84 per cent black, had a higher percentage of black residents than any other county in North Carolina, and ranked 92 out of 100 counties in terms of lowest median family income in the year 1980. The first batch of trucks with toxic waste started entering Warren County in September 1982. The people of Warren County had little or no information on the landfill and had not been consulted before the decision to site had been taken. Residents and 

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), ‘Hazardous waste is a waste with properties that make it dangerous or potentially harmful to human health or the environment. The universe of hazardous wastes is large and diverse. Hazardous wastes can be liquids, solids, contained gases, or sludges. They can be the by-products of manufacturing processes or simply discarded commercial products, like cleaning fluids or pesticides.’ Some well-known hazardous wastes are arsenic, asbestos, cadmium, chromium, cyanide, mercury and Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) (UNEPA 2008, 3). Other hazardous wastes with their health impacts may be found in the Greenpeace Report 1994 (III-1 and III-13). 358

Envir o nment al Just ic e their allies, including the United Church of Christ, the Congressional Black Caucus and the Southern Christian Leadership Council organised many demonstrations against State officials, who continued to ignore concerns over PCBs leaking into drinking water supplies in the County. Protesters lay down on roads leading into the landfill to block the arrival of the toxic trucks. At the end of the six-week protests, manifested in innumerable ways, and leading to at least 500 arrests, the people of Warren County lost their battle against the State and the toxic wastes were dumped in that landfill. National media made the struggle of the people of Warren County visible to all, making it the first milestone in the environmental justice movement (Ringuist 1997; Foreman 1998; Bullard and Lewis 1996). The Warren County demonstrations that brought environmental justice concerns into the national limelight in the US and that brought charges of ‘environmental racism’ to the forefront of environmental policy-making prompted an investigation by the US General Accounting Office (GAO). This investigation was to inquire into hazardous waste facility locations in EPA’s Region IV, which comprises eight states in the South, namely Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The 1983 GAO report, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities, confirmed the allegations by the protesters of Warren County that there was a strong correlation between low income and colored populations with waste dumping (USGAO 1983). It was found by the GAO investigation that three of the four hazardous waste landfills in the region were located in predominately African-American communities who comprised only 20 per cent of EPA’s Region IV population. The Warren County saga also led to the publication of the landmark 1987 Toxic Waste and Race report by the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice (Chavis and Lee 1987). This highly quoted study used three variables (namely, minority population in percentage terms, mean household income and mean value of owner-occupied housing) to investigate the link between the percentage of low-income minority inhabitants in a community and the number of commercial waste facilities. It was found that three out of five African-Americans live in communities with abandoned toxic waste sites. This suggests that 60 per 



There had been prior struggles by communities of color against environmental threats much before Warren County. The farm fields of California’s San Joaquin valley saw similar uprisings in the early 1960s when Latino farm workers under the leadership of Cesar Chavez struggled for protection from harmful pesticides and workplace rights. Similarly, in 1967, African-American students in Houston took to the streets in protest about a city garbage dump in the neighborhood that was related to the death of two children. Residents of West Harlem, in New York City, fought and lost a similar battle against the siting of a sewage treatment plant in their community. In 1979 the AfricanAmerican community in Houston brought the first Title VI lawsuit challenging the siting of a landfill (NRD C 2008; Bullard et al. 2007). The term was coined and defined by Reverend D r Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., Executive D irector and CEO of the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice. For more information, see Bullard (1990; 1993), Chavis and Lee (1987), Pulido (2000), Mohai and Bryant (1992) and Hargrove (1995). 359

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns cent of Africans live in neighborhoods with one or more toxic waste sites (Boener and Lambert 1995, 64; Anand 2004, 12). Empirical studies that mapped out the relationship of race, income, class and the siting of hazardous waste sites boomed in the years to come (see Krieg 1998; Ringuist 1998; Talih and Fricker 2002; Weinberg 1998). The movement of environmental justice had taken root and was now growing and spreading to all quarters of research, policy-making, analysis and activism. By the time Bill Clinton became president in 1992, environmental justice had developed into an increasingly important issue to leaders of both the D emocratic and Republican Parties, more so the former. D uring the Clinton administration, environmental justice finally got incorporated as federal government policy with the appointment of two environmental justice leaders, Reverend Benjamin Chavis and D r Robert Bullard, to Clinton’s Natural Resources transition team, and with Clinton’s Executive Order 12898. The order directed federal agencies to work on identifying and resolving situations that dealt with disproportionate impacts of federal policies on lowincome people and people of color. It also emphasised that federal agencies should prevent discrimination by race, color or national origin in any federally funded environmental or health-related program. Since the movement has taken root, there has been a steady increase in the number of environmental justice networks and groups, be they community-based, legal, faith-based, youth-focused or labor-oriented. There has also been an increase in the number of academic institutions that focus their research on environmental and justice issues affecting poor people and people of color. Today, one can argue that environmental justice advocates have had a profound impact in many arenas, namely public policy, industry practices, research and curriculum development. Success stories exist concerning groups that have managed to block permits for polluting facilities to protect the poor from being disproportionately burdened by environmental ‘bads’. Today the US Environmental Protection Agency even has an Office on Environmental Equity. Justice has become political and has taken center stage. D espite the range of successes, socioeconomic disparities continue to exist in the distribution of commercial hazardous waste facilities in the US. Low-income and minority populations in the US, mostly people of color (that is, African-Americans, Hispanics) are still disproportionately impacted due to the concentration of hazardous facilities in their backyards. While the rich, powerful voters of the US can say NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) more easily, people of color have little say, and when they fight for justice, their voices often are unheard. This is owing to the fact that low-income communities and people of color lack access to decisionmakers on zoning boards, lack the monetary assets to engage the technical and legal



Executive Order 12898 of 11 February 1994, ‘Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations’, available at . Executive Order 12898 reinforces Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 360

Envir o nment al Just ic e expertise to fight a law-suit and, more importantly, they lack access to information about the impact of facilities on long-term public health (NRD C 2008). A recent report prepared by the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries in 2007, Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty, 1987–2007, compares the racial and socioeconomic characteristics of the neighborhoods, defined as three kilometers around the facility, of the 413 commercial hazardous waste facilities in the US to those of non-host neighborhoods. For 2000, it was found that ‘host neighborhoods with commercial hazardous waste facilities are 56 percent people of color whereas non-host areas are 30 percent people of color’ (Bullard et al. 2007, 46). This report reveals significant socioeconomic disparities in terms of poverty rates, annual household incomes, education, employment and economic conditions of people living near the nation’s hazardous waste facilities with the poorer (mostly people of color) residing closer to the hazardous waste facilities. According to the report, which was compiled using databases created at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment between 2001 and 2004 through grants from the likes of the National Science Foundation, ‘the above racial and socioeconomic disparities are statistically significant at the 0.001 level, which means that there is less than a 0.1 percent (1 in 1000) chance that the differences are merely the result of random chance’ (Bullard et al. 2007, 46). This report also pinpoints states with the 10 largest differences in people of color percentages between host neighborhoods and non-host areas. The report found that: For both California and Nevada, these percentages are about 80 percent. For three additional states, people of color make up a two-thirds or more majority in these neighborhoods. In descending order of by the size of the differences between host and non-host areas, these states are: Michigan (66 percent vs 19 percent), Nevada (79 percent vs 33 percent), Kentucky (51 percent vs10 percent), Illinois (68 percent vs 31 percent), Alabama (66 percent v. 31 percent), Tennessee (54 percent vs 20 percent), Washington (53 percent vs 20 percent), Kansas (47 percent vs 16 percent), Arkansas (52 percent vs 21 percent) and California (81 percent vs 51 percent). Differences in these percentages range from a high of 47 percent for Michigan to 30 percent for California (ibid., 52). It was found that many other states also have disparities in people of color percentages. Many of these have majority people of color host neighborhoods, including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Texas (ibid.). Charges of environmental racism and justice have not ceased to be heard ever since the movement first took place. The most recently talked-about case study, evaluated through the lens of environmental justice, is that of Hurricane Katrina (see Bullard 2001; Morse 2008). The question of how governmental policies and institutions can protect the poor and people of color from environmental and toxic threats remains a serious issue. What makes environmental justice even more complex, politically charged 361

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns and frequently contested is that ‘it is the rubric within which issues such as environmental equity, environmental discrimination, and environmental racism are embedded’ (Bowen et al. 1995, 641). Critics of environmental justice and racism claims have made the case that, although the research correlating numbers of hazardous waste facilities and socioeconomic indicators are acceptable, they fail to prove the claim made by environmental justice advocates that the poor and minority communities now bear in hosting LULUs ‘as the result of racism and classism in the siting process itself’ (Been 1994b, 1002). Been forwards four objections to claims of racism and unfairness advanced by environmental justice advocates; namely, the causation objection, the mobility objection, the aggregation objection and the free market objection. The causation objection claims that evidence provided by environmental justice researchers ‘does not establish that siting choices caused the disproportionate impact LULUs now have on people of color and the poor’ (ibid., 1005). Been surmises that ‘LULUs were not disparately sited in poor and minority neighborhoods, but that the dynamics of the housing and job markets led people of color and the poor to move to areas surrounding LULUs because those neighborhoods offered the cheapest available housing’ (ibid.). Been argues that it is crucial to examine the role that the market plays in creating the disparities in LULU sitings that environmental justice advocates blame on racism or classism (ibid., 1006). The mobility objection assumes that once a LULU is sited, the rich will move away and, since property values drop drastically, low-income communities (often people of color) move in to affordable housing. The aggregation objection ‘asks why the burden of LULUs should be viewed in isolation, without giving consideration to other burdens and benefits that neighborhoods suffer and enjoy’ (ibid., 1007). Finally, the free market objection ‘asserts that the benefit of living far from LULUs should be allocated through the free market, just as the benefit of living near pristine mountain lakes or beautiful city parks is allocated’ (ibid.). Let us now go over some definitions of environmental justice and its components in order to see if this theoretical frame may be applied to the analysis of international environmental problems. The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) defines environmental justice (EJ) as: The fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. Fair treatment means that no group of people, including racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic group should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal programs and policies (2008). Environmental justice concerns itself with mainly two themes, namely how agendasetting and policy formulation takes place (that is, procedural justice) and how benefits and burdens are distributed amongst all populations, rich and poor (that is,

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Envir o nment al Just ic e distributive justice) (see website for First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit of 1991; see also Anand 2004). Procedural justice highlights: • •

• • • • •

the basing of public policy on mutual respect and justice for all peoples, free from any form of discrimination or bias; the right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision-making, including needs assessment, planning, implementation, enforcement and evaluation; the right to political, economic, cultural and environmental self-determination of all people; the need for urban and rural ecological policies to clean up and rebuild our cities and rural areas in balance with nature; the need to honor the cultural integrity of all communities, and provide fair access for all to the full range of resources; the need for informed consent and the education of present and future generations, which emphasises social and environmental issues; the right to participate on grounds of equality and fairness at all levels of decision-making.

D istributive justice highlights: • •

•

• •

•

the right to be free from ecological destruction; universal protection from nuclear testing, extraction, production and disposal of toxic/hazardous wastes and poisons and nuclear testing that threaten the fundamental right to clean air, land, water and food; the right to ethical, balanced and responsible uses of land and renewable resources in the interest of a sustainable planet for humans and other living things; the fundamental right to political, economic, cultural and environmental selfdetermination of all peoples; the cessation of the production of all toxins, hazardous wastes and radioactive materials, and that all past and current producers be held strictly accountable to the people for detoxification and the containment at the point of production; the right of all workers to a safe and healthy work environment without being forced to choose between an unsafe livelihood and unemployment;

 D elegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held on 24–27 October 1991, in Washington D C, drafted and adopted 17 principles of environmental justice, available at . Since then, ‘The Principles’ have served as a defining document for the growing grassroots movement for environmental justice; also see Anand (2004, 10). 363

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns • •

•

• • •

the right of victims of environmental injustice to receive full compensation and reparations for damages as well as quality health care; governmental acts of environmental injustice as violations of international law, the Universal D eclaration On Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on Genocide; the strict enforcement of principles of informed consent, and a halt to the testing of experimental reproductive and medical procedures and vaccinations on people of color; opposition to the destructive operations of multinational corporations; opposition to military occupation, repression and exploitation of lands, peoples and cultures, and other life forms; the conscious decision to challenge and reprioritise our lifestyles to ensure the health of the natural world for present and future generations.

Environmental Justice: the International Level An understanding of the geopolitical context on international environmental politics is crucial to an assessment of whether environmental justice provides a good theoretical lens for understanding the international politics of the environment (see Anand 2004 for an application of the environmental justice frame to the cases of climate change, ozone depletion and the export of hazardous wastes). The differential developmental patterns between rich industrialised countries and poorer developing countries has led to their different approaches towards international environmental issues, broadly speaking. According to Hurrell and Kingsbury, ‘the principal fissure is between the developed and developing world, and it is the potential for the global environment to become a major source of confrontation between the North and South that renders it such a fundamental political issue’ (1992, 39). The striking features of the rich industrialised countries of the ‘North’ (that is, the US, Canada, the countries of Western Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) are as follows – they are relatively more wealthy with high rates of literacy, high incomes and good health care; they have well-organised civil society; they have successful and effective environmental organisations, environmental concerns have been on their agenda for several decades, and environmental science as a research field is highly developed; they typically set the environmental agenda at the international level; and finally they are the primary consumers of natural resources and are the primary polluters. On the other hand, the poorer, developing countries of the ‘South’ (that is, most countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America) are less wealthy, have lower incomes, have large populations that are poor and often illiterate, have lower life-expectancy, have limited political 

The Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Union Carbide in Bhopal incidents raised awareness of environmental issues associated with hazardous waste. 364

Envir o nment al Just ic e infrastructure, lack capital, contain most of the world’s natural resources, have large agricultural sectors, rely on export of raw materials and, lastly, are trying to develop by imitating the neoliberal models of development followed by countries of the developed North. While the environmental concerns of the North result from over-development, environmental problems of the South can be attributed to poverty, overpopulation and their embeddedness in international trade (Hurrell and Kingsbury 1992; Lancaster 2001; D wivedi and Vajpeyi 1995; Koenig 1995). Although there are differences that exist between countries of the North and South, ‘what the countries have in common transcends their differences; it gives them a shared sense of identity and a reason to work together for common objectives’ (South Commission 1990, 1). In the midst of the stark differences and inequalities between rich and poor countries, does a case exist for environmental justice? The case of the export of hazardous wastes from OECD to non-OECD countries clearly demonstrates similarities in the national and international disposals of wastes. Low-income and minority populations are most affected and suffer the costs of ‘clean-up’ efforts in the world. D eveloping countries have been attractive dumpsites for developed countries to dispose of their hazardous wastes. Referred to as ‘garbage imperialism’ or ‘toxic 



Moon sums up the income differentials that exist between the ‘North’ and ‘South’ countries: ‘The yawning income gap between the richest and poorest nations is the most dramatic and visible dimension of the North–South divide and the one that has marked the global economy for at least two centuries … the GD P per capita of the OECD countries was about 45 times that of low-income countries in the early 1960s … That ratio grew to about 73:1 in the early 1990s and has declined only to the high 60s early in the twenty-first century. The gap between middle and low-income countries … traced a similar path, widening from 3.2 to 4.6 over this era. The income ratio between the OECD and middle-income countries has barely budged for half a century. Beginning at about 14.1, it grew as high as 16.3, before declining to a level almost identical to where it began in 2005’ (2007, 581). The 1980s brought to light several incidents of hazardous waste-dumping in poor countries. On 31 August 1986, 14,000 tons (see note 11) of toxic incinerator ash from Philadelphia was loaded as cargo on the ship Khian Sea. When a number of neighboring states refused to let Philadelphia dispose of the ash in their landfills when it was discovered that the ash was toxic, the easiest, next-best solution was to ship it overseas, to countries with less stringent environmental standards. The Khian Sea tried to unload its waste in the Bahamas, but was refused. The ship then tried dumping its waste in the D ominican Republic, Honduras, Panama, Bermuda, Guinea Bissau and the Netherlands Antilles over the next 14 months. Finally, the ship’s crew dumped 4,000 tons of ash on the beach near the Haitian city of Gonaives since the Haitian government had issued a permit for ‘fertiliser’ import. When the Haitians realised that the waste was toxic, thanks to the efforts of Greenpeace, government officials canceled the permit and ordered a return of the toxic shipment, but the Khian Sea had already left. It then visited Senegal, Morocco, Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka and Singapore, hoping to dump the remainder of its toxic load. The ship even changed its name (from Khian Sea to Felicia to Pelacano) and its registration for anonymity. Two years later, having tried to dump in 11 365

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns colonialism’ this trend raised the question of whether developing countries were becoming the ‘industrial world’s trash bin’ (Williams 1991, 280). The economic logic for exporting hazardous wastes to developing countries was quite sound: there is a paucity of disposal sites in waste-generating countries, thereby involving higher costs of disposal and dealing with stringent laws and regulations. Exporting to the developing world would mean lower costs, lesser control in terms of laws and regulations and no adverse side-effects of hazardous waste disposal to deal with (Lipman 2002). Logically, then, ‘the developing nations of the world become an attractive site for illicit disposal of hazardous waste generated by the US and European multinational corporations’ (Williams 1991, 276). In an internal memo dated 12 D ecember 1991, Lawrence Summers, then chief economist at the World Bank, endorsed this sort of ‘economic logic’ when he stated: Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [less devel­oped countries]? I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that … I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted. He then goes on to explain the three reasons for this strong statement, as summarised best by Godwin: First, the costs of pollution depend on earnings forgone through death or injury, these costs are lowest in the poorest countries. Second, costs rise disproportionately as pollution increases, so shifting pollution from dirty places to clean ones reduces costs. Third, people value a clean environment more as their income rises, if other things are equal, costs fall if pollution moves from rich to poor ones (1993, 196). different countries, the toxic ash was dumped in the Indian Ocean, somewhere between Singapore and Sri Lanka. The compensation for damages caused to Haiti is still being settled (Cunningham and Cunningham 2004). In 1987, it was discovered that Italy had exported many thousand tons of toxic radioactive waste to Koko, Nigeria. When found, the Italian government agreed to take back its waste. Many of the drums in which this waste was stored were damaged and leaking, causing the packaging workers preparing for the return of the waste to Italy to suffer from severe chemical burns and partial paralysis. The Nigerian government now has a death penalty on waste importers. Similarly in 1988, the US offered Guinea Bissau a contract to dump its 15 million tons of hazardous wastes over a period of 5 years. The contract was sealed at a hefty US$600 million that was four times the GNP (gross national product) of Guinea Bissau. The contract never materialised owing to public pressure and international concern. Many other such arrangements were reported in countries such as Namibia, Nigeria, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, the Baltics and Ukraine in the 1980s (Lipman 2002). 366

Envir o nment al Just ic e The 1980s revealed that hazardous wastes generated in industrialised countries were being shipped to developing countries for final disposal.10 When these cases received international attention owing to the revolutionary work of environmental NGOs and the media, the practice of such exports was viewed as morally unjustifiable and meriting international action. The first official international effort to work in the direction of controlling such exports was in May 1981 with the Montevideo Program, which identified the disposal of hazardous wastes as an area needing international law and cooperation. Under the gamut of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Governing Council, an Ad Hoc Committee of Legal Experts was established to develop guidelines and principles for the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous wastes. This development was followed by many efforts by the international community to address the problems surrounding the export of hazardous wastes from OECD to non-OECD countries. In June 1987, the Cairo guidelines gave the ‘go ahead’ to the Executive D irector of UNEP to convene a working group to plan a global convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes. The same year, Greenpeace launched its campaign against hazardous wastes. From 1987 to 1989, when the Basel Convention was signed, several meetings were convened towards the finalisation of the Convention. While the US opposed any sort of ban on the export of hazardous wastes, along with JUSCANZ (Japan, the US, Canada, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia) countries, Greenpeace denounced the Convention as being an instrument for the legalisation of waste trade. Many other groups also fought to have a ban – such as the Organization for African Unity (OAU), the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) and the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). In May 1992, the Basel Convention received its twentieth ratification and entered into force (BAN 2008). The treaty sought to regulate, rather than ban, the trade in haz­ardous waste. That is what the developed countries wanted. D eveloping countries wanted an outright ban on the export of hazardous wastes. The Basel Convention technically covers wastes destined for recycling operations. D eveloping countries fought for a complete ban because they realised quite quickly that the recycling of imported hazardous waste in developing coun­tries could prove to be just as dangerous as complete disposal (Clapp 2001). The Basel Convention adopted what the developed countries wanted. Was procedural justice questionable? In 1995, amidst heated debates and disagreements, an amendment to the Basel Convention, the Basel Ban, was signed. This breakthrough ban prohibits the export of toxic wastes from OECD to non-OECD countries for both disposal and recycling (BAN 2008). The Basel Ban stands as an impressive legal landmark, not only because it will be legally binding with strictly laid-down criminal penalties for violations once it enters into force with the sufficient number of state ratifications. It is also impressive because it resulted from the collective efforts of the G-77 group of developing countries, spearheaded by the African Group; it was 10 Most of the international trade in hazardous wastes takes place among in­dustrialised countries, where the wastes originate; see O’Neill (2000). 367

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns adopted despite strong opposition from powerful business lobbies (such as the International Chamber of Commerce) and the world’s most powerful countries. It will also close the ‘recycling loophole’ that the Basel Convention had left open for developed countries to continue exporting hazardous wastes to developing countries (Puckett 1997). There is a continuing concern that even if the Basel Ban comes into force, dirty industries that previously exported hazardous waste would find an alternative by moving to developing countries. In other words, they would consider migrating the entire hazardous waste-generating industry to developing countries (Clapp 2001, 5). D uring these developments in international law and organisation, the transboundary exports of hazardous wastes continued. A Greenpeace database called ‘D atabase of Known Hazardous Waste Exports from OECD to non-OECD Countries, 1989–March 1994’ shows that from 1989 to 1994, the US exported the most amount of hazardous waste to non-OECD countries, followed by Germany. While the US exported 779,986 (US) tons of hazardous waste (as part of 214 schemes), Germany exported 370,892 tons (with 208 schemes).11 Overall, there were 693 hazardous waste export schemes from OECD to non-OECD countries, amounting to a total of 2,611,677 tons of hazardous waste (Greenpeace 1994, II-4). In terms of recipients, the Baltics and Eastern/Central Europe received 299 (primarily from Germany), the largest number of such schemes from OECD countries, Latin America and Caribbean received 148 (primarily from the US), East Asia 112 (mainly from the UK), South East Asia 84 (mainly from the UK) and South Asia 43 (mainly from the UK). Africa, Middle Eastern and Pacific countries had smaller ‘official’ imports of hazardous waste although one would imagine that clandestine exports into these regions was taking place and went undocumented (ibid., II-7). These figures of export and import schemes from OECD to non-OECD countries saw a rise in the 1990s, after which hazardous waste export numbers have seen a decline but not a stop. Although exported hazardous waste comprises only about 10 per cent of the total waste generated by OECD countries, it amounts to several hundred tons every year. And as Puckett puts it: ‘Suddenly for the first time, the “under-polluted” and “lowest-wage” countries had something new to sell – a new cash crop – their health’ (1997). Today, more than twenty years since the Basel Convention, there is still deep concern that developing countries are being dumped on, owing to the same economic logic that Lawrence Summers laid down. Jim Puckett puts it bluntly: Toxic waste, if left to a ‘free market’, will follow the path of least resistance. Obeying an ‘impeccable economic logic’, hazardous by-products of dirty industrialization inevitably move towards those areas with the least political or economic clout to resist them. In the absence of any legal restraints, wastes move down an ‘economic gradient’, defined by the contrasting disposal costs in different locations. These costs are determined by many factors, including

11 All tonnages are expressed in US tons (1 US ton = 2,000 pounds = 0.907 metric tonne). 368

Envir o nment al Just ic e differing environmental legislation, infrastructure, labor costs, land value, and debt (ibid.). The ninth meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP9) of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their D isposal convened in Bali, Indonesia on 23 June 2008. The theme was ‘Waste Management for Human Health and Livelihood’. One of the main issues covered during this meeting was the inability of the world’s poorest nations to manage the heaps of toxic waste flowing in for disposal from rich countries because of a lack of resources and political will.12 Our task as a civil society is to ensure global governance in order to protect the poorest people of the poorest countries from becoming the toxic trash cans of the rich. The most convincing reason to ban the export of hazardous wastes to the poor of the world is to ensure justice. Neither economic nor political rationales will do what the ‘justice’ argument may. The problem arises, of course, in conceptualising what justice may look like at the international level (see Beitz 1975; Brown 1997; Nagel 2005).

Conclusion This chapter sought to assess if the frame of environmental justice, as is used at the domestic level, applies to assessment of international environmental politics. The two components of environmental justice are procedural justice (that is, the meaningful involvement and fair participation of negotiating parties) and distributive justice (that is, how costs and benefits are distributed amongst parties). The previous section demonstrated how both these components of environmental justice suffered a blow at the international level. The fairness of the international law, as of any other legal system, will be judged, first by the degree to which rules satisfy the participants’ expectations of justifiable distribution of costs and benefits, and secondly by the extent to 12 The severity of the problem was well documented in 2006, when tons of hazardous waste was dumped around Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s main city. The health hazards of the toxic waste killed at least 10 people and left thousands ill. The waste originated from a tanker that was chartered by the D utch trading company Trafigura Beheer BV. Trafigura contracted with a local Ivory Coast company to accept and dispose of the waste, which it did by simply dumping it all in the city at night. Trafigura continues to deny responsibility but has accepted to pay US$236 million to the Ivorian government. At the COP9 conference in Bali, the D irector of Nigeria’s D epartment of Pollution Control and Environmental Health, D r O.O. D ada said, ‘There is a need to reduce the export of toxic waste into Africa … It’s causing a lot of health problems, environment problems. The region is wondering why we have to do this when we have our own problems’ (Casey 2008). 369

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns which the rules are made and applied in accordance with what the participants perceive as the right process (Franck 1995, 7). A distributive justice analysis of the transboundary export of hazardous wastes from rich to poorer countries is apparent. The industrialised countries are the main generators of hazardous wastes and by exporting this waste to the developing world, they are externalising their ‘environmental bads’. D eveloping countries that receive the hazardous wastes suffer serious health and environmental risks as discussed in the previous section. Is this transfer a sign of ‘injustice’? D o justice issues concerning hazardous wastes also surround the export of wastes within non-OECD countries and from non-OECD to OECD countries? The answer is probably ‘no’ if we view the export direction from rich to poor countries as a purely economic transaction based on prices and laws of the market and free trade among countries. Seen through the lens of justice, one tends to see the vision of injustices involved, those that the market never claimed to address. Not only do we then see the North–South justice issues but also we are forced to remember that every North and South has its own pockets of North and South. At the end of the journey of toxic or hazardous waste rest the poorest of the poor, who do not know what the issue even is, and who do not have the political power, nor voice to change anything. Besides, these are also the people whose day-to-day priorities are how to get their basic rights like food, clothing and shelter. Unless the rich, industrialised waste-producers of the world are willing to forgo profit in the name of justice, the picture looks bleak and change looks impossible. A procedural justice analysis of the transboundary export of hazardous wastes is also quite telling. After many negotiations and deliberations, the Basel Convention on the Export of Hazardous Wastes sought to ‘control and regulate’ rather than ‘ban’ the export of hazardous wasted from OECD to non-OECD countries. If there were one-state, one-vote procedures instead of weighted voting, the outcome of treaty negotiations could be different than it is, giving developing countries a greater, stronger voice to get their demands met in international law. But that is a gigantic ‘if’. While developing countries were in large number and strength, the Convention was obliged to include what the ‘chorus of the industrialised North, led by the USA’ wanted, which was to keep the movement of wastes open. D eveloping countries were obliged to tailor internal bans to the import of waste from OECD countries instead. Eventually when the Basel Ban reignited the need for a ‘ban’ in the name of ‘justice’, the US simply refused to ratify the ban along with other industrialised waste-producing countries (Anand 2004, 130). Justice is not a static concept with a fixed definition. Overall, at the international level, there are those who would argue that justice is not merely a function of power and self-interest; others argue that justice is merely a function of power and interest and dismiss justice as a strategy for ‘rationalization, deliberate misinterpretation or propaganda, and assume that it masks a more basic opportunism or pursuit of self interest’ (Welch, 1993, 1). Justice, in the case of the export of hazardous waste, resembles the latter version of justice more closely.

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Envir o nment al Just ic e In the realm of international environmental politics, self-interest takes the form of an equation that involves responsibility, capacity and vulnerability. This equation can help us appraise many environmental case studies from a North– South dimension, namely climate change, ozone politics, biodiversity, logging, biofuels – the list is endless, just as international environmental problems that confront us are. Whether justice is rendered or not to the North or the South is one banal question; the more urgent one is whether justice is being served to Planet Earth who is not going to wait for any negations, treaties, conference of parties or bans before she strikes back, leading to a ‘tragedy of the commons’.

References Anand, R. (2004), International Environmental Justice: A North–South Dimension (Aldershot: Ashgate). Basel Action Network (BAN) (2008), . Been, V. (1994a), ‘Locally Undesirable Land Uses in Minority Neighborhoods: D isproportionate Siting or Market D ynamics?’, Yale Law Journal 103:6, 1383– 1422. — (1994b), ‘What’s Fairness Got to D o with it?: Environmental Justice and the Siting of Locally Undesirable Land Uses’, Cornell Law Review 78: 1001–84. Beitz, C.R. (1975), ‘Justice and International Relations’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 4:4, 360–389. Boener, C., and Lambert, T. (1995), ‘Environmental Injustice’, Public Interest 118, 61–82. Bowen, W., et al. (1995), ‘Toward Environmental Justice: Spatial Equity in Ohio and Cleveland’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 85:4, 641–63. Brown, C. (1997), ‘Theories of International Justice’, British Journal of Political Science 27:2, 273–97. Bullard, R. (1990), Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Equity (Boulder, CO: Westview). — (1993), Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Boston, MA: South End Press). — (2001), ‘Environmental Justice in the 21st Century: Race Still Matters’, Phylon 49:3/4, 151–71. Bullard, R., and Lewis, J. (1996), Environmental Justice and Communities of Color (San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books). Bullard, R., et al. (2007), Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty, 1987–2007: Grassroots Struggle to Dismantle Environmental Racism in the United States, A Report Prepared for the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries (Cleveland, OH: United Church of Christ).

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Casey, M. (2008), ‘Officials: Poor Nations Can’t Manage Toxic Waste’, The Associated Press (published online 26 June 2008), . Chavis, Jr., B., and Lee, C. (1987), Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States (New York: United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice). Clapp, J. (2001), Toxic Exports: The Transfer of Hazardous Wastes from Rich to Poor Countries (New York: Cornell University Press). Cunningham, W., and Cunningham, M. (2004), Principles of Environmental Science, 2nd edn (McGraw-Hill Higher Education). D wivedi, O.P., and Vajpeyi, D . (eds) (1995), Environmental Policies in the Third World (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press). Foreman, C. (1998), The Promise and Peril of Environmental Justice (Washington, D C: Brookings Institution Press). Franck, T. (1995), Fairness in International Law and Institutions (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Greenpeace (1994), Database of Known Hazardous Waste Exports from OECD to NonOECD Countries, 1989–March 1994, prepared for the Second Conference of Parties to the Basel Convention, 21–25 March. Godwin, D . (1993), ‘The Basel Convention on Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes: An Opportunity for Industrialized Nations to Clean Up Their Acts’, Denver Journal of International Law and Policy 22:1, 193–208. Hargrove, E. (1995), ‘Foreword’, in Westra, L., and Wenz, P. (eds), Faces of Environmental Racism: Confronting Issues of Global Justice (Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield). Hurrell, A., et al. (1992), The International Politics of the Environment (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Koenig, D . (1995), ‘Sustainable D evelopment: Linking Global Environmental Change to Technology Cooperation’, in D wivedi, O.P., and Vajpeyi, D . (eds). Krieg, E.J. (1998), ‘The Two Faces of Toxic Waste: Trends in the Spread of Environmental Hazards’, Sociological Forum 13:1, 3–20. Krueger, J. (1999), International Trade and the Basel Convention (London: Earthscan). Lancaster, C. (2001), ‘D eveloping Countries: Winners or Losers?’, in Kugler, R., and Frost, E. (eds), The Global Century: Globalization and National Security (Washington, D C: National D efense University Press). Lipman, Z. (2002), ‘A D irty D ilemma: The Hazardous Waste Trade’, Environment 23:4, available at Harvard International Review, . Mohai, P., and Bryant, B. (1992), ‘Race, Poverty, and the Environment’, EPA Journal 18:1, 6–8. Moon, B. (2007), ‘Reproducing the North–South D ivide: The Role of Trade D eficits and Capital Flows’, International Studies Review 9:4, 581–600. Morse, R. (2008), Environmental Justice Through the Eye of Hurricane Katrina (Washington, D C: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Health Policy Institute).

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Envir o nment al Just ic e Nagel, T. (2005), ‘The Problem of Global Justice’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 33: 2, 113–46. Natural Resources D efense Council (NRD C) (2008), Environmental Justice, , accessed 21 July 2008. O’Neill, K. (2000), Waste Trading among Rich Nations: Building a New Theory of Environmental Regulation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Puckett, J. (1997), ‘The Basel Ban: A Triumph Over Business-As-Usual’, Basel Action Network, , accessed 24 July 2008. Pulido, L. (2000), ‘Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban D evelopment in Southern California’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90:1, 12–40. Ringuist, E. (1997), ‘Environmental Justice: Normative Concerns and Empirical Evidence’, in Vig, N., and Kraft, M. (eds), Environmental Policy in the 1990s: Reform or Reaction? (Washington, D C: CQ Press). — (1998), ‘A Question of Justice: Equity in Environmental Litigation, 1974–1991’, The Journal of Politics 60:4, 1148–65. South Commission (1990), The Challenge to the South: The Report of the South Commission (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Talih, M., and Fricker, R.D . (2002), ‘Effects of Neighborhood D emographic Shifts on Findings of Environmental Injustice: A New York City Case Study’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 165:2, 375–97. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (2008), ‘Waste Management for Human Health and Livelihood’, The Ninth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention, . United States D epartment of Justice (1964) ‘Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’, . United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) (2008), ‘Environmental Justice: Basic Information’, , accessed 5 February 2008. United States General Accounting Office (USGAO) (1983), Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities, Report No. GAO/RCED -83-168 (Washington, D C: USGAO). Weinberg, A. (1998), ‘The Environmental Justice D ebate: A Commentary on Methodological Issues and Practical Concerns’, Sociological Forum 13:1, 25–32. Welch, D . (1993), Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Williams, J. (1991), ‘Trashing D eveloping States: The Global Hazardous Waste Trade’, Buffalo Law Review 39:5, 275–301.

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22 Multinational Corporations and Global Responsibilities Morton Winston

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are among the most powerful institutions in contemporary society. A multinational (or sometimes transnational) corporation can be defined as … an enterprise, whether of public, private or mixed ownership, comprising entities in two or more countries, regardless of the legal form and fields of activity of these entities, which operates under a system of decision-making permitting coherent policies and a common strategy through one or more decision-making centers, in which the entities are linked, by ownership or otherwise, that one or more of them [may be able to] exercise a significant influence over the activities of others, and, in particular, to share knowledge, resources and responsibilities with the others (UN 1983). According to recent UN estimates, there are currently over 77,000 MNCs, along with an estimated 800,000 subsidiaries and untold millions of national suppliers and vendors. Together MNCs now directly control roughly 25 per cent of all global commerce, and are indirectly involved in nearly every aspect of the global economy. In addition to their economic impact, MNCs are increasingly recognised as important transnational actors in their own right, and they often operate in tandem with national governments in forging policies on trade, investment and other economic matters. As MNCs have grown larger and more powerful in recent years there has been a growing gap between the legal obligations of these business enterprises and emerging social expectations about their responsibilities to society. This governance gap is being addressed by a variety of approaches ranging from voluntary corporate ethics codes, to specific legislative proposals for legal reform in corporate regulation and corporate law, to ‘soft law’ initiatives at the international level designed to clarify the specific responsibilities of MNCs under international human rights law, as well as voluntary commitments and initiatives. In this chapter

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns I will review several of these initiatives in order to provide an overview of some of the main developments and emerging issues in this dynamic field.

Corporate-Led Globalisation and its Critics Most business enterprises, even many quite large MNCs, operate their businesses ethically with due regard for their legal obligations and their moral responsibilities to society. Business enterprises come in many shapes and sizes, but generally speaking they all provide several important social benefits: they produce goods and services that fulfill their customer’s needs and desires; they provide jobs and incomes for their employees; they create wealth for their owners and investors, and they pay taxes which help support government services. Like other corporations, MNCs are quite diverse in terms of their economic activities, their core competencies and capabilities, organisational structures, governance, ownership, revenues and other characteristics. They operate globally both through their far-flung supply chains and through global brands and marketing strategies. The largest MNCs now have annual revenues that dwarf the national budgets of all but the largest nation-states. ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, posted a record profit of $40.6 billion in 2006 on total operating revenues of $365 billion. Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, posted an $11.3 billion profit on revenues of $351 billion. For comparison, the government of Brazil’s national revenue in 2007 was $244 billion, Pakistan’s was $21.2 billion, while Senegal’s was only $2.2 billion (CIA 2008). While the majority of the global Fortune 500 companies are headquartered in the G7 countries (the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and Japan), 24 Chinese and 6 Indian MNCs have now made the list (CNN 2007). According to one estimate, the world’s top 200 companies have twice the assets of 80 per cent of the world’s people, and that asset base is growing 50 times faster than the income of the world’s majority (Hawken 2007). Since 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down and a convenient year from which to date the beginning of the current era of corporate-led economic globalisation, MNCs have dramatically increased their economic power and their influence over domestic and international affairs. A convergence of technological factors including global communications networks, the rise of container shipping and air freight, computerised inventory control, and the Internet have made it economically feasible and cost effective for MNCs to create and manage global supply chains. The globalisation of production and finance has given capital a significant advantage over labor in industrial relations. More and more companies have seen the economic advantages of sourcing production from low-wage countries with poor labor and environmental standards and enforcement, while marketing the products in more affluent societies.



Currency units are US dollars throughout. 376

Mul t inat io nal Co r po r at io ns and Gl o bal Respo nsibil it ies In a prescient and influential article Stephen Hymer (1971) argued that this process of global out-sourcing would undercut workers in the developed countries, weaken the trade union movement, and launch a global ‘race to the bottom’ in which capital searched out the lowest cost production services from among the thousands of independent suppliers operating in the developing world. The governments of the developing countries would have little incentive to enforce labor and environmental standards comparable to those found in the developed countries for they fear it would undercut foreign investment and hurt their global competitiveness. This failure of host government regulation, together with the mobility of capital as compared to labor, and the weakness of the trade union movement, has created the current governance gap that exists between the rights enjoyed by workers in the developed and developing countries. At the same time, working through their armies of paid lobbyists, corporatebacked think tanks, trade associations, corporate front organisations, and political campaign contributions, MNCs have often operated as a ‘hidden hand’ in global governance, dictating terms of international trade agreements favorable to their interests, and controlling development polices through international banks and lending institutions to conform to the tenets of a neoliberal economic philosophy that promotes policies such as free trade, government deregulation, the commoditisation of public goods and the privatisation of government services. Through the complex provisions of multilateral trade treaties such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well bilateral investment and trade agreements and host government agreements, MNCs now have enforceable legal rights to move capital, products and services across international borders with few if any barriers, and to freeze national human rights and environmental regulatory regimes. MNCs can under the terms of such agreements sue nation-states for violations of their treaty and contractual obligations, and force them into binding international arbitration in which considerations of the public interest have little if any relevance. But this expansion of corporate power has met with resistance from some segments of civil society, mainly from a global citizen’s movement and some of the roughly 30,000 international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) which address issues such as poverty alleviation, human rights, sustainable development and environmental protection. Within countries NGO and civil society organisations (CSOs) are a major social force, even in Eastern Europe where some 100,000 NGOs have sprung up since 1989. According to Paul Hawken, NGOs and CSOs are the ‘organs’ of a global social movement that has no name and no leader, and consists of perhaps 100 million individuals and 2 million organisations whose values and moral convictions lead them to challenge the dominant political and economic actors, the 192 nation-states and the thousands of MNCs (2007). The central beliefs shared by the various groups and organisations that have led this social backlash against corporate-led globalisation are that MNCs have become too powerful and are at the same time too unaccountable to society. Many activists believe that current national and international laws do not effectively regulate MNC 377

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns activities, particularly as concerns their impacts on social issues such as human rights and environmental issues such as pollution and environmental degradation, and are using various strategies and tactics to close the governance gap and make MNCs more accountable for their social and environmental performance. Some NGOs prefer to employ confrontational tactics that include boycotts and public shaming campaigns. Some use shareholder resolutions to try to influence corporate policies and practices, while others engage in ‘lawfare’ and file law suits against MNC bad actors, such as the Doe v. Unocal case brought under the Alien Torts Claim Act. Other NGOs prefer more cooperative strategies when addressing MNCs, such as partnering on specific projects to protect endangered species or promote programs for poverty alleviation in areas of the developing world where MNCs operate (Winston 2002). One of the catalysts for this backlash against unbridled corporate power was the rise of the modern ‘anti-sweatshop’ movement in the early 1990s, which made headlines in 1996 when Charles Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee publicly confronted TV hostess Kathy Lee Gifford with allegations that sweatshop labor was used to make clothes for the Kathie Lee line then being sold at WalMart. Other events, such as the Exxon Valdez spilling 10 million gallons (38 million litres) of crude oil in Prince William Sound in Alaska on 24 March 1989, and Royal D utch Shell’s refusal to intercede to prevent the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues who had been protesting environmental destruction in Ogoniland in November 1995, helped to mobilise public opinion against corporate wrongdoing. Popular demonstrations at the D ecember 1999 meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle brought the anti-corporate movement into clear view. While the majority of the world’s population sees globalisation in a generally favorable light, many people are concerned about the power of MNCs and are worried about the harm their activities can produce to society and the environment. A 2007 poll of public opinion conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that a majority of respondents in countries representing 56 per cent of the world’s population believed that globalisation is generally good for their national economies and for consumers, they but are concerned about its negative impacts on the environment and on jobs, and would like to see environmental and labor standards built into trade agreements (World Public Opinion 2007). Even critics of globalisation will admit that increases in international trade and investment have helped to lift millions out of poverty in countries such as China and India, but many people continue to be concerned about the negative impacts of globalisation on environmental quality and on labor standards, and point out that some poor countries, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, are being by-passed by market forces. This ambivalence about the impact of MNC activities has led to attempts to develop a system of global governance in which a greater proportion of the world’s population will be able to enjoy the economic benefits of globalisation while also mitigating its social and environmental costs. This new thinking about global

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Mul t inat io nal Co r po r at io ns and Gl o bal Respo nsibil it ies governance is currently reflected in the concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER).

The Social and Environmental Responsibilities of MNCs The traditional view of the social responsibilities of corporations held by neoliberal economists, such as R. Edward Freeman, is that the sole responsibility of business is to generate wealth for its owners (1970). While the goal of maximising shareholder value still describes what many people believe to be the primary legal obligation of public corporations, the idea that corporations also have significant social and environmental responsibilities has gained significant traction in recent years. A major theoretical innovation in business theory that helped propel this shift was the development of ‘stakeholder theory’ (ibid. 1984). According to this view, corporations have responsibilities to a variety of stakeholders; for instance, to their employees, their customers, their suppliers and business partners, to residents of their host communities and to society at large, as well as to their owners and investors. While from a legal point of view a corporation may be described as a ‘legal person’ or a ‘nexus of contracts’, from a social point of view, corporations sit at the center of networks of social relations and their activities impact a various groups of stakeholders. How particular corporations are viewed nowadays is largely a function of whether the public believes they are fulfilling their social responsibilities vis-à-vis these various stakeholders. While many corporations manage their brands and protect their reputations by means of corporate philanthropy, the main focus of CSR has been on the so-called ‘negative externalities’ of company’s core business activities; that is, the costs and harms to society and to the environment that do not show up in the corporation’s financial reports. In 1994 John Elkington coined the term ‘triple bottom line’ (TBL) to describe ethical business practices that take social and environmental impacts on all stakeholders into account. The elements of TBL are ‘people’ or social capital, ‘planet’ or natural capital, and, of course, ‘profit’, and not just profit and loss but the lasting economic impact that an enterprise has on the economy. The TBL model for CSR reporting has been developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) into a standardised reporting template which companies in diverse business sectors can use to document their efforts to conduct their business activities in an ethically responsible and sustainable fashion. GRI was formed by a coalition of NGOs in 1997 which included the Tellus Institute, CERES and the UN Environment Program. The ‘third-generation’ (G3) GRI guidelines were published in October 2006, and currently more than 1,000 enterprises, both for-profit and nonprofit corporations, use these guidelines to prepare their sustainability reports. In addition, over 150 companies now subscribe to AccountAbility’s AA1000 standard for credible sustainability reporting. There has also been significant uptake of the CSER agenda within the corporate sector itself. A 2006 survey conducted by McKinsey & Co. showed that more than 90 per cent of CEOs are doing more than they did five years ago to incorporate 379

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns environmental, social and governance issues into their corporate strategies and operations, and 72 per cent believe that CSER should be fully embedded, while only 50 per cent think their firms are actually doing so (CSR wire, 7 May 2007). More than half of Global 500 Companies now report on their social and environmental activities and impacts, and many have dedicated CSR officers and departments. MNCs are now expected to have implemented management systems that allow them to comply with the relevant laws of both home and host governments as well as to internationally recognised human rights and labor rights norms. Increasingly well-managed companies engage with stakeholders as a means of learning what is expected of them and learning what works. A recent article in The Economist, not the most left-leaning of business journals, published poll data showing that 59 per cent of 1,200 business executives now think that CSR is a very high or high priority, and project that this will reach 70 per cent by 2010, stating that: ‘Company after company has been shaken into adopting a CSR policy: it is almost unthinkable today for a big global corporation to be without one’ (Franklin 2008). But suspicion remains that many companies are embracing CSER only as elaborate public relations exercises intended to secure their ‘license to operate’. The rising social expectations that MNCs be accountable to society for their ‘triple bottom line’ performance has spurred a variety of initiatives by governments, NGOs and business associations designed to promote better CSER practices. While there is no commonly accepted definition of CSR (or CSER), these terms are widely understood, particularly within the business community, to refer only to voluntary moral responsibilities, apart from any legal obligations that corporations may have. However, as I shall use these terms, CSR and CSER include both the legal obligations of business enterprises as well as their moral responsibilities to society. Standard accounts of CSER portray corporate responsibilities as a pyramid in which legal obligations (such as the fiduciary duties of corporate directors and regulatory requirements imposed by either an MNC’s home or host country) are the base; additional moral responsibilities that fulfill emerging social expectations (for instance, concerning human rights and environmental protection) are the middle, and corporate philanthropy (such as gifts to causes that are unrelated to the core activities of the business enterprise) are at the top, these last being optional and non-obligatory, but praiseworthy (Leisinger 2006). However, as Jennifer Zerk has argued, ‘the debate as to whether CSR should be “voluntary” or “mandatory” is misguided for several reasons’ (2006). In most jurisdictions there are legal requirements that prohibit companies from discriminating on the basis of race, sex or religion in the hiring of employees. There are also numerous laws that protect worker safety in the workplace, that prohibit the use of child labor and forced labor, and forbid other unjust and abusive labor practices. However, in many countries in which MNCs operate, these laws are not well enforced. So, if a particular company that operates both in D enmark and Bangladesh respects these labor rights, is their policy the result of a legal obligation or a moral responsibility? Because of the power which MNCs have to influence legislation, and because they retain armies of corporate lawyers ready to defend them against legal threats, law and morality are intertwined in how corporations 380

Mul t inat io nal Co r po r at io ns and Gl o bal Respo nsibil it ies respond to their legal obligations. Thus it is a mistake to assume that mandatory legal regulation will automatically lead to better corporate behavior, particularly in countries where the enforcement of labor and environmental laws is lax. Moreover, the conception of CSR as voluntary action separate from legal compliance ‘is artificial and does not take into account either the role that statutory law has to regulate business behavior indirectly, nor the role that particularly international law has as a source for CSR normativity’ (Buhmann 2007). In the current global debate there is a spectrum of opinion as to whether mandatory legal regulation or voluntary self-regulation is the better strategy for advancing the CSER agenda. The broad definition of CSER I prefer avoids this debate by assuming that in the foreseeable future there will be a mixture of normative regimes, including national and international laws, emerging social expectations, ‘soft law’ approaches, contractual obligations, as well as voluntary self-regulation through enlightened self-interest, which, in combination, will regulate the ways in which MNCs operate in the twenty-first century and contribute to closing the governance gap that presently exists.

The Scope of Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility As attention to the behavior of multinational corporations has grown, so too has the list of concerns and issues which socially and environmentally responsible companies are expected to address. Issues now on the corporate CSER agenda include: compliance with relevant laws of both home and host governments; company policies that are consistent with internationally recognised human rights and labor rights standards; stakeholder recognition and engagement; respect for civil rights and liberties and for social, cultural and economic rights; special care for vulnerable groups; avoidance of complicity in human rights abuses; taking an active role in preventing conflict and in peacebuilding in countries where there have been recent conflicts; avoiding forced labor and child labor; protecting the health and safety of employees; respecting the rights of freedom of association and right to collective bargaining; banning discrimination; limiting working hours; providing remuneration in keeping with ‘living wage’ standards; sustainable production practices; environmental stewardship, sustainable resource use, valuing ecosystem services, avoidance of environmental pollution and degradation and reduction of carbon emissions; avoidance of threats to public health; provision of lost cost medications for care of HIV/AID S; anti-bribery policies and avoidance of corruption; responsible political involvement; fair competition, fair marketing policies and honest dealing; responsible supply chain management; consumer data protection and privacy; fair access to goods and services; consumer education and awareness; contribution to social and economic development; community

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns involvement in decision-making; and pro bono work, charitable contributions and other beneficial voluntary actions not related to core business activities. This is a long list and it will not be possible to address all of the initiatives that attempt to address these various aspects of CSER. Instead, I will review several of the major initiatives in the fields of business and human rights and environmental sustainability. CSER initiatives can be divided into those that are multisectoral, covering a large and diverse set of businesses, and those which mainly deal with specific business sectors, such as oil and mining or banking and finance. Within each of these categories one can distinguish initiatives led by intergovernmental institutions, such as the UN, those led by national governments of either the host or home countries, and private initiatives led either by business associations or by NGOs and non-profits.

Business and Human Rights One of the earliest CSR initiatives addressing human rights concerns was the Sullivan Principles. Launched by Reverend Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia in 1977, this voluntary code of conduct required that companies operating in apartheid South Africa observe internationally accepted human rights norms against racial discrimination or face economic boycotts and divestment campaigns in their home countries. The original Sullivan Principles were widely employed in the 1980s in the US, and eventually 125 US-based companies with operations in South Africa signed them, and over 100 ceased operations in that country. In 1999, more than twenty years after he first launched this initiative, Reverend Sullivan joined UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in announcing the Global Sullivan Principles in 1999. This base code for business responsibility for human rights was designed to induce multinational corporations to become full and active partners in the advancement of human rights and social justice internationally.

The UN Global Compact In a speech to the World Economic Forum in D avos, Switzerland in January 1999, the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan launched his own version of these standards, the UN Global Compact, a global voluntary initiative designed to gain the commitment of large corporations to nine basic CSR principles. In June 2004 a tenth principle, dealing with the avoidance of corruption was added. The ten principles that now comprise the UN Global Compact direct company signatories to: • • •

support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; ensure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses; respect freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining; 382

Mul t inat io nal Co r po r at io ns and Gl o bal Respo nsibil it ies • • • • • • •

eliminate the all forms of forced and compulsory labour; abolish the use of child labor; eliminate discrimination in employment and occupation; support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges; undertake initiatives to promote environmental responsibility; encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies; work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.

However, the Global Compact is not designed as an accountability mechanism, like a code of conduct against which corporate performance can be audited, but rather has been billed as the basis for a ‘learning community’ through which MNCs can engage in dialogue designed to promote sustainability and share knowledge about best business practices. The second Global Compact Leaders Summit took place on 5–6 July 2007 and adopted the Geneva D eclaration on corporate responsibility, an agreement whose intent is to align the global business community around a set of common goals including: building sustainable markets, combating corruption, safeguarding human rights and protecting environmental quality. Some 4,000 organisations from 116 countries have so far subscribed to the ten principles of the UN Global Compact, making it one of the most widely endorsed CSER initiatives. However, the UN Global Compact has been criticised by some NGOs for its lack of adequate accountability mechanisms.

Multistakeholder Voluntary Codes of Conduct Some MNCs have adopted one of several human rights codes developed by multistakeholder initiatives (MSIs) such as the Fair Labor Association (FLA) brand certification system, the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) base code, or Social Accountability International’s (SAI) SA8000 certification system, all of which base their codes of conduct on international labor rights and human rights standards. The MSI initiatives grew out of the anti-sweatshop movement of the 1990s as responses to abusive working conditions mainly in the developing countries of the global South: in the current era of globalisation, those countries produce many of the consumer goods for the developed world, particularly in labor-intensive industries such as footwear, apparel, toys and electronics. Each of the MSIs are governed by a fairly diverse groups of stakeholders representing the business community, non-governmental organisations, academia and, in some cases, governments, who have joined together in order to find practical solutions to the problem of closing the governance gap. MSIs have functioned as ‘norm entrepreneurs’ and have  

See <www.unglobalcompact.org>. See Fair Labor Association, <www.fairlabor.org>; AccountAbility, <www. accountability21.net>; Ethical Trading Initiative, <www.ethicaltrade.org>; and Social Accountability International, <www.sa-intl.org>. 383

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns developed workplace codes of conduct that are designed to be used to determine whether a particular company or facility is in compliance with internationally recognised human rights and labor rights standards. D espite some important differences among their codes and methods of implementation, they all address the following issues: child labor, forced labor, health and safety, freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, discrimination, disciplinary practices, working hours and overtime, and remuneration. The standards that govern these practices in the workplace are recognised internationally in major human rights conventions such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and many of their specific provisions have been codified in the conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO). The MSIs thus represent attempts to translate international human rights and labor standards into practical policies for the sustainable protection of human rights of workers in the global production system. They derive some of their legitimacy from being based on internationally recognised human right and labor rights standards, but because they were also developed through multistakeholder dialogues as practical codes to be used in social auditing, they can draw their legitimacy from a variety of other sources, including stakeholder dialogue, their scale and scope of adoption and their demonstrable impacts on actual working conditions (Winston 2007). While there is evidence from recent impact studies that such voluntary standards do improve compliance with some labor and human rights standards in the workplace, they have only been embraced by a small number of MNCs and none has reached the scale of adoption needed to make a real difference in the lives of millions of workers worldwide.

The UN Norms On 13 August 2003 the UN Sub-Commission on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights voted unanimously to endorse the Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and other Business Entities Regarding Human Rights (UN Norms). These guidelines were the result of over four years of careful analysis by experts in international law, in consultation with representatives of the business community, the NGO community and others. They represent one of the current international benchmarks for understanding the responsibilities for human rights of business enterprises under international law. However, the UN Norms have generated a great deal of controversy. While the UN Norms were not designed as a practical code of conduct they do provide for some basic implementation procedures and processes. First, the Norms anticipate that companies will adopt their own internal rules of operation to assure the protections set forth in this document. Second, the Norms indicate that businesses are expected to assess their 

UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, ‘Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights’ (7 August 2003), UN D oc. E/CN.4/Sub2/2003/12/Rev.2, , accessed 22 May 2007. 384

Mul t inat io nal Co r po r at io ns and Gl o bal Respo nsibil it ies major activities in light of its provisions. Third, compliance with the Norms is supposed to subject the business to monitoring that is independent, transparent, and includes input from relevant stakeholders. Fourth, if companies violate the Norms and cause harm, the UN Norms allow for reparations, such as the return of property or other compensation. This last item is one of the provisions of the Norms that some companies found most objectionable. The initial reaction to the UN Norms within some segments of the business community, particularly those companies represented by the US Council on International Business (USCIB), was quite negative. In a series of talking points prepared by the USCIB in November 2003, it was argued that the UN Norms are an attempt to ‘circumvent national political and legal frameworks’, and that they risked ‘undermining the capacity of national governments to implement and enforce their existing human rights laws’. The USCIB went on to assert that the UN Norms are an attempt to privatise the enforcement of human rights; and they argued that to ‘shift that responsibility to companies would place them in an impossible situation of being held accountable for the actions of those beyond the company’s control’. The USCIB viewed the UN Norms as the first step in a process leading to the global legal regulation of the activities of MNCs, and they were determined to stop this regulatory process before it progressed any further. However, another group of MNCs associated with the Business Leaders Initiative on Human Rights had a more favorable reaction and agreed to ‘road test’ the norms. The critical reception of the UN Norms at the (now defunct) UN Human Rights Commission and the new UN Human Rights Council almost led to their rejection. However, rather than rejecting this initiative entirely, the UN Human Rights Commission decided to defer any final decision on the matter, and asked the Secretary-General of the UN to appoint a special representative to prepare reports that ‘identify and clarify’ current international standards and practices regarding business and human rights, and to submit his ‘views and recommendations’ for consideration by the Council. Professor John Ruggie of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government was appointed as the Secretary-General’s Special Representative (SGSR), and he conducted extensive consultations during 2006 and 2007. In March 2007 he submitted an interim report which addressed only the first part of his mandate, then in April 2008 he submitted his final report and recommendations to the UN Human Rights Council.

   

US Council on International Business, ‘Talking Points on the D raft Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with regard to Human Rights’, , accessed 19 June 2007. See <www.blihr.org>. UN Commission on Human Rights, ‘Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises’, 20 April 2005, (E/CN/2005/69). UN Human Rights Council, ‘Business and Human Rights: Mapping International Standards of Responsibility and Accountability for Corporate Acts’, 9 February 2007, (A/HRC/8/035). 385

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns In his interim report Professor Ruggie reaffirmed the need to make global businesses observe international human rights standards, since ‘Globalization as we know it today is not sustainable, I fear, for the simple reason that market rationality by itself is not a sufficient basis for human community and social solidarity.’ But he also expressed doubts that the social justice models that worked for the developed nations will translate to the global arena. What is needed is a different approach that will enable businesses to attain ‘sustainable compliance’ with human rights norms, which, he says, ‘must be at the very core of any attempt to construct a sense of global community in which to embed market forces so that globalization itself becomes sustainable’, and to do that on a scale which makes a real difference in the lives of the hundreds of millions of workers in the global economy. The fundamental challenge, as he noted on page 3 of this report (see note 8), is to scale up sustainable compliance mechanisms quickly, ‘before even worse forms of backlash than we have seen already set in’. In his final report, Ruggie rejects the idea that states negotiate an international treaty imposing binding standards on MNCs, and instead sets forth a common conceptual and policy framework for closing the governance gap that relies on a set of differentiated but complementary governance responsibilities for the government sector, the business sector and civil society. The basic framework has three elements: states’ duty to protect against human rights by non-state actors (including businesses) affecting persons within their own territories or jurisdictions; the corporate responsibility to respect all human rights, and in particular, to exercise due diligence in preventing harm to human rights and avoiding complicity in human rights abuses; and lastly, the creation of mechanisms at the national, regional and enterprise levels that allows individuals who believe their human rights have been violated to seek redress and remediation under conditions of fair access. This framework preserves a fundamental feature of the UN Norms in that it reaffirms that states are the primary duty bearers with respect to the protection and enforcement of human rights within their own territories but, unlike the UN Norms, it denies that business enterprises have a ‘secondary’ duty under international law to protect human rights within their own spheres of influence, substituting the notion of a responsibility to exercise due diligence in respecting all human rights. But the most innovative element of this framework is the emphasis on developing adequate grievance mechanisms and remedies in cases where a non-state actor, such as a private corporation or state-owned enterprise (SOE), may have failed in its responsibility to respect human rights and avoid human rights harm. The report notes that, despite the adoption of better CSR policies by many companies in recent years, ‘considerable numbers of individuals whose human rights are impacted by corporations, lack access to any functioning mechanism that could provide remedy’ (para. 102). It recommends that this lack of access to rights can be corrected by establishing better judicial mechanisms, non-judicial grievance mechanisms, and company-level or MSI grievance procedures that provide legitimate, accessible, fair and transparent means for complaints to be reviewed and settled. But whether this policy framework will be adopted and implemented on the scale necessary to close the governance gap regarding human rights remains to be seen. 386

Mul t inat io nal Co r po r at io ns and Gl o bal Respo nsibil it ies

Sustainable Development and Environmental Stewardship On 24 D ecember 1968 the Apollo 8 spacecraft sent back the now iconic image of the Earth rising above the surface of the moon. Less than two years later, the modern environmental movement was born on the first Earth D ay, 22 April 1970. This ‘teach-in’, organised by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, was intended to draw attention to the environmental crisis and to galvanise public concern to protect the Earth’s fragile environment. Since that time, issues such as environmental pollution and degradation, unsustainable resource use, deforestation, depletion of fisheries, species extinction and global climate change have been added to the corporate agenda. The 1992 UN Conference on Environment and D evelopment (UNCED ) in Rio de Janeiro was the first major international conference on sustainability at which companies participated openly rather than as behindthe-scenes influencers. The major outcomes of this conference were the Rio D eclaration, which stated that ‘the right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations’ and Agenda 21, a comprehensive program for global action towards the goal of sustainable development. In 2000, 189 member states of the UN adopted the Millennium D evelopment Goals (MD Gs), which, among other things, commit state parties to make significant progress towards ensuring environmental sustainability and integrating sustainable development practices into their national policies. The principles outlined in Agenda 21 and the MD Gs were reaffirmed at the World Summit on Sustainable D evelopment (or Earth Summit) held at Johannesburg, South Africa between 26 August and 4 September 2002. In February 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its fourth assessment report in which it stated that the evidence that global warming is taking place is unequivocal, and that there is a 95 per cent probability it is being caused mainly by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human (anthropogenic) activity such as the burning of fossil fuels.10 In 2007 the IPCC shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice President Al Gore, for bringing the issue of global climate change into sharp focus. While the main focus of such intergovernmental agencies as the UN and the IPCC has been on galvanising action by state actors, the global business community has found itself under increasing scrutiny for practices that are perceived as harmful to the environment. As in the case of human rights protection, it is generally acknowledged that there is currently a governance gap between the rising social expectations being placed on MNCs to operate in an environmentally sustainable fashion, and the legal regime that regulates their activities, and a number of important public and private initiatives have been launched in an attempt to close that gap. The World Business Council for Sustainable D evelopment (WBCSD ) was the brainchild of Swiss businessman Stephan Schmidheiny, who was the Secretary A/CONF.151/26 (Vol. I), 12 August 1992. 10 See <www.ipcc.ch>. 387

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns General’s business advisor for the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. In 1995 the WBCSD was officially launched, and has now enlisted more than 200 global corporations to its goal of achieving sustainable development, by promoting the concept of ‘ecoefficiency’, and making the business case for sustainability.11 A study by Globalscan in 2006 found that the work of the WBCSD was widely respected within the business community for advancing the sustainability agenda. However, some NGO critics have claimed that business-led initiatives like this one are really about hijacking social and environmental standards while managing public perceptions through ‘greenwashing’, ‘bluewashing’, and ‘astroturfing’ public relations campaigns.12 While some of the leading NGOs active in the environmental movement have campaigned against corporate environmental abuses, increasing numbers of them are finding ways of engaging with and cooperating with businesses in order to find practical solutions to the challenge of sustainability. INGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund and the Rainforest Alliance have partnered with MNCs to develop practical approaches to sustainable fishing, forestry and agriculture. INGOs operating in both the social and environmental arenas are increasingly being called upon to engage in multistakeholder dialogues with MNCs to help them navigate the largely unexplored territory of corporate social and environmental responsibility. The greatest challenge facing humanity, one which has particular relevance to business, is unquestionably the global climate crisis. Scientific advisory groups such as the IPCC have documented global warming and in their 2007 assessment report claimed that evidence that this trend is due to human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels which emit CO2 into the earth’s atmosphere, is ‘unequivocal’ (IPCC 2007). The best estimates currently available suggest that if human civilisation is to avoid high risk scenarios it will be necessary to go on a crash carbon diet and reduce global CO2 emissions by 90 per cent by the year 2050. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or the Kyoto Protocol) was agreed to on 11 D ecember 1997, and as of 2007 the UNFCCC had been ratified by 170 countries representing 60 per cent of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The US has not ratified this treaty, although it alone is responsible for roughly 25 per cent of global GHG emissions. Plans are already underway to negotiate a successor framework agreement. Energy-related MNCs based in Western Europe have become somewhat more comfortable with carbon regulation than those based in the US because of the European Trading System in which emission credits are given to polluters. However, many NGOs would like to see a ‘cap and trade’ system implemented globally in which aggregate GHG emissions would be capped, with the cap decreasing each 11 See <www.wbcsd.org>. 12 ‘Greenwashing’ refers to attempts by corporations to be perceived as environmentally responsible. ‘Bluewashing’ refers to similar attempts by MNCs to associate themselves with UN standards (the blue UN flag). ‘Astroturfing’ refers to corporate public relations campaigns disguised by means of corporate front organisations that attempt to pass themselves off as authentic grassroots citizens’ initiatives. For definitions of these and other terms in the CSR lexicon, see Visser et al. (2008). 388

Mul t inat io nal Co r po r at io ns and Gl o bal Respo nsibil it ies year, and in which corporate GHG emitters would have to pay for the right to pollute, but would be able to trade carbon credits with other emitters if they pollute below their allowance. The United States Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of two dozen major US-based corporations, issued a report that calls upon the federal government to ‘quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions’.13 In the absence of any federal energy policy in the US, in April 2008 the governors of 18 US states signed a declaration committing themselves to stopping global warming, and several states, including California, New Jersey and Massachusetts, have developed their own programs for reducing GHG emissions. But such local efforts, while laudable, do not solve the collective action problem on a global scale. Global solutions to global problems are needed if humanity is to avert a climatic catastrophe in the latter part of the twenty-first century.

Tri-Sector Partnerships for Global Solutions Global citizens often feel that the major problems facing humanity, such as ending human rights abuses, alleviating poverty, protecting the environment and converting to sustainable economic development policies, are not being effectively addressed by governments. As Bornstein has noted: Decades of failed development policies, discouraging wars on poverty, drugs, and crime have led many to conclude that while governments must be held responsible for translating the will of the citizenry into public policy, they are not necessarily the most effective vehicles, and certainly are not the sole legitimate vehicles, for the actual delivery of many social goods, and they are often less inventive than entrepreneurial citizen organizations (2004). The global governance gap exists because the traditional way of solving collective action problems, through the imposition of legal regulations, does not work well enough, or fast enough, or on a global scale: ‘Quite simply, the current setup for solving global problems doesn’t work. We need a better one, and fast’ (Rischard 2002, 60). One way forward might be found in the concepts of ‘network governance’ and ‘three-folding’. Rischard, Perlas and others have argued that the global problems of the twenty-first century can be effectively addressed by setting up tri-sector partnerships consisting of national governments, INGOs and MNCs, that organise themselves into ‘open source’ Global Issues Networks, which create and propagate ‘soft law’ norms for addressing global problems. These tri-sector partnerships would work quickly, would not be bound to the kind of short-term thinking that plagues electoral politics, and would not attempt to legislate, but would give a high 13 See <www.us-cap.org>. 389

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns degree of social legitimacy to the norms and policies they create to deal with global problems. Norm enforcement would also be ‘soft’ and would employ ratings and reputational effects, including public shaming of freeriders, to induce compliance with preferred policies. Nicanor Perlas has called this approach to global governance ‘three-folding’; ‘In three-folding, the three major powers of the world – business, government, and civil society, mobilise their unique economic, political and cultural perspectives, talents, and resources to create a vastly different and more beneficial kind of globalization’ (2000, xxv). What he calls ‘conscious three-folding’ strives to achieve sustainable development in seven dimensions: the political, economic, ecological, social, cultural, human and even the spiritual. One is beginning to see this three-folding network model of global governance emerging; for instance, in the rise of social entrepreneurs like Bill D rayton, Mohammed Yunnis, Mary Allegretti and Vera Cordiero, who have created enterprises which combine a social or environmental mission with an incomeproducing revenue stream (Bornstein, 2004). Such hybrid or ‘blended-value’ organisations are becoming more common as traditional non-profit and forprofit corporations are finding themselves under increasing pressure to attend to their triple bottom lines and to become more socially accountable to their stakeholders. Governments, which should certainly have a seat at the table in trisectoral partnerships aimed at addressing global problems, unfortunately, for the most part have been missing in action. Perhaps it is time for them to invent a new kind of politics; one that will incentivise scientific and technological innovation and promote social entrepreneurship, rather than defend the failed policies of the past.

References Bornstein, D . (2004), How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas (New York: Oxford University Press). Buhmann, K. (2007), ‘Corporate Social Responsibility and Business Responsibilities for Human Rights’, Nordisk Tidsskrift for Menneskerettigheter 25:4, 331–52. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (2008), ‘The World Factbook’, , accessed 14 March 2008. CNN (2007), ‘Fortune Global 500’, , accessed 14 March 2008. Elkington, J. (1998), Cannibals with Forks: The Triple-Bottom Line for 21st Century Business (Gabriola Island, BC: New Society). Franklin, D . (2008), ‘Corporate Social Responsibility: D o It Right!’, The Economist 386,  .

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Mul t inat io nal Co r po r at io ns and Gl o bal Respo nsibil it ies Freeman, R.E. (1970), ‘The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits’, New York Times Magazine, 13 September. — (1984), Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach (Boston, MA: Pitman). Hawken, P. (2007), Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came Into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming (New York: Viking). Hymer, S. (1971), ‘The Multinational Corporation and the Law of Uneven D evelopment. Economics and World Order’, in Bhagwati, J. (ed.), Economics and World Order (New York: Macmillan). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2007), Fourth Assessment Report (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Leisinger, K.M. (2006), On Corporate Responsibility for Human Rights (Basel: Novartis Foundation for Sustainable D evelopment). Perlas, N. (2000), Shaping Globalization: Civil Society, Cultural Power and Threefolding (Quezon City, Philippines: Center for Alternative D evelopment Initiatives). Rischard, J.F. (2002), High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them (New York: Basic Books). United Nations (UN) (1983), Draft United Nations Code on Transnational Corporations, UN D oc. E/1990/94. Visser, W., et al. (2008), The A to Z of Corporate Social Responsibility: A Complete Reference Guide to Concepts, Codes, and Organizations (New York: Wiley). Winston, M. (2002), ‘NGO Strategies for Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility’, Ethics & International Affairs 16:1, 71–87. — (2007), ‘Social D ialogue and the Legitimation of Corporate Human Rights Policies’, Nordisk Tidsskrift for Menneskerettigheter 25:5, 399–419. World Public Opinion (2007), World Favors Globalization and Trade but Wants to Protect Environment and Jobs (Chicago: Chicago Council on Global Affairs). Zerk, J.A. (2006), Multinationals and Corporate Social Responsibilities: Limitations and Opportunities in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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23 Nationalism, Self-D etermination and Secession Omar D ahbour

Introduction: History The interrelated topics addressed in this chapter have only fairly recently come to the explicit attention of large numbers of philosophers, although this recent upsurge of interest supplements and advances debates within political theory, normative international relations theory and international law. While nationalism is a phenomenon that has preoccupied historians for some time, and self-determination is a concept well known to jurists through much of the last century, philosophers have thought about these phenomena only under the duress of the end of the Cold War and the resultant shifts in political sovereignties occurring thereafter. This is not to say that such issues – even that of secession – have not been implicit in political philosophising throughout the whole of the modern era (Livingston 1998). They concern, in various ways, the bases of political authority and the international recognition thereof – certainly a foundational problem of political philosophy. It is not completely accurate to maintain that this problem was ignored in the modern classics. There is, for instance, Rousseau’s essay on the ‘government of Poland’ and Hegel’s meditations on the relation of nations to states in his Philosophy of Right and Philosophy of World History. More pointedly, Fichte gave his ‘Addresses to the German Nation’ in 1807–08, to be followed later in the century by a very different (though not incompatible) justification of nationalism in a chapter of John Stuart Mill’s Considerations on Representative Government. But there is not much else. In the mid-twentieth century, there was a brief flurry of interest in the ‘national question’ and its connection to the idea of self-determination by political and intellectual historians, no doubt due to the immanent demise of the British and other colonial empires and the pressing question of what was to replace them (Cobban 1970; Kedourie 1960). But we have had to await recent developments in international relations – to find ourselves in the post-colonial and now postcommunist eras – in order to witness the philosophers’ turn to consideration of this problem. Rather than tell the (all-too-brief) story of the awakening of this interest,

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns this chapter will provide a conceptual outline of the main issues and controversies that have arisen in this recent development of a philosophy or philosophies of nationalism (and its alternatives). The chapter is divided into five sections, each considering a specific question that has received significant recent attention: (1) what are nations and is there such a thing as ‘national identity’?; (2) is nationalism an ethically relevant category for understanding the nature of political legitimacy and social justice?; (3) are multinational states legitimately entitled to insist on the reconciliation of the competing demands of ethnonational groups within them?; (4) is selfdetermination, whether applicable to national groups or not, (still) an important norm in international law?; and (5) does self-determination (ever) entail a right of secession, perhaps including national groups, and on what basis is such a right justifiable?

National Identity The classic problem of denoting essential features of national identity, which has been a central concern of historians from the nineteenth century until now, received some attention from philosophers in the 1990s. This, no doubt, had become a pressing issue for newly emergent nationalist movements and their opponents as a result of the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of several multinational states (such as the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia). The ground had been prepared by a debate among historians and anthropologists in the 1980s concerning two rival conceptions of national identity. These conceptions came to be referred to as the modernist and primordialist conceptions. The first, and more popular one, considered national identities to be the products of features of modern society, whether of industrialisation and the creation of large-scale economies or of capitalism and the establishment of linguistically based markets for capital accumulation (Gellner 1983, Anderson 1983). The second conception suggested that national identities were rooted in more historically enduring ethnic communities, which pre-dated recent socioeconomic changes (Smith 1986). This debate was resolved to some extent by other research which showed that, while ethnicities were important in providing a basis for national identities, these ethnicities were themselves not necessarily enduring (‘primordial’) so much as constituted by the belief that they were (Connor 1994). In addition, it was also shown that the mobilisation of these beliefs was a contingent matter, dependent on the vicissitudes of modern political histories and the available means of expressing social discontent (Breuilly 1982; Horowitz 1985). Philosophers entered the debate on national identity by linking the concept with philosophical notions of personal identity on the one hand, or of political identity on the other. In the first instance, nations were seen as contexts for individuation, analogous to families, and, because of this, gave rise to special obligations of a moral nature (Poole 1999). In the second instance, nations were seen to be generated by 394

Nat io nal ism, Sel f -Det er minat io n and Sec essio n political demands of a certain kind (of nations seeking states) and therefore to be inextricably tied to this type of political goal (Gilbert 1998). Attempts to define nationality, both historical and philosophical, have oscillated between two different axes: on the one hand, between objectivistic and subjectivistic definitions; on the other hand, between realist and nominalist ones. The common moves have been either to link an objectivist notion of national features or characteristics (ethnicity, language) with a realist conception of their immutability or to connect a subjectivist notion founded on beliefs in nationhood with a nominalist conception of the mutability of such beliefs. The historians have tended to favor the first, objective-realist, view, while philosophers have opted for the second, subjective-nominalist, view. But, in fact, neither linkage is required. National identities do seem to pertain to beliefs of some kind – whether of ethnicity/consanguinity or of political allegiances. But these beliefs have a real historical presence; they are not easily changeable – at least not without other historical or political transformations. It is in fact a subjective-realist view of national identities – that they are founded on beliefs in a common ancestry or ethnicity, which are themselves regarded as substantial manifestations of the real world – that seems closest to resolving the debate on the meaning of national identity (D ahbour 2003, 17–37). This means, as Paul Gilbert has argued, that nations are necessarily linked to nationalism, that is, to a particular political ideology. But this also means, as Ross Poole has maintained, that national identities are real (though illusory in their content – the belief that nationalities are immutable), since ideologies do have historical substance and effects. Analysis of the meaning of national identity therefore necessarily leads to the study of nationalism.

Nationalism Historians of nationalism are sometimes agnostic on the definitions of nations, in part because they focus on political movements that are apparently self-defining as nationalist. Yet, some philosophers have also seemed to dodge the definitional issue, to the extent that they are concerned with the ethical dimensions of nationalism. The existence of this ethical dimension is itself contestable: nationalism may appear as either ethically noxious or, at best, neutral. However, there has been a lively debate about the ethical significance, if any, of nationalist ideas in the last couple of decades. The historical significance of nationalist movements is not in doubt; but the claim that nations are important and distinctive venues for ethical obligation, or are important and vital claimants of political or moral rights, has been the subject of lively debate among philosophers. There are two sorts of claims that have been made that nations do have this ethical significance – they can wear the labels of communitarian and liberal nationalism, respectively. There are also two sorts of attacks that have been made against such claims; these attacks have come from

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns political cosmopolitans on the one hand, and from certain political liberals on the other. The idea that nations are the proper context for ethical life is what D avid Miller has called the ‘principle of nationality’ (1993, 12). This principle asserts the proper claim of nationalities to state power – that is, ‘national self-determination’. Miller, and other communitarians, are keen to distinguish this claim from the idea that a specific body of people desire or consent to a government. Nationalism as an ethical idea is equivalent to the notion that, to the extent that a nation exists, it can invoke such a claim. Self-determination is an entailment of the idea that nations exist, in other words. There is no other purpose to nations than that. The first philosopher to give a detailed accounting of this notion was Michael Walzer, starting in his influential book, Just and Unjust Wars (1977). Walzer developed a number of suggestive concepts to justify the idea of a nationality principle – that is, that nations were the primary context of an ethical life and, as such, had legitimate claims to political independence, irrespective of prevailing constitutional or territorial arrangements. Walzer’s adoption of the designation of nations as ‘communities of character’ (from Otto Bauer, the leading historian of the ‘national question’ among the Austro-Marxists of the late Hapsburg Empire) introduced an ethical dimension definitionally (Walzer 1983, 62). But it was his emphasis in Just and Unjust Wars on ‘communal autonomy’ as a foundational value of international relations that gave nationalism an intrinsically ethical dimension. International law and politics was to maximise the autonomy (for example, independence and integrity) of communities, above all else; and it was this that gave nations the right to claim self-determination, to the extent that they could be identified as ‘communities of character’. A further dimension was added by Walzer in his later book, Spheres of Justice: essential to achieving a measure of social justice was what Walzer referred to as the primary good of ‘membership’ (ibid., 31–63). This was the right of communities to determine (and restrict) their membership, so as to allow for a (limited) just distribution of social goods. This right was not subject to prior considerations (of justice), nor were later just distributions of other goods possible without it. Lest others find this idea unethical, Walzer later introduced a notion meant to produce consistency of application of the prior norm of communal autonomy. This was the notion that all must abide by a ‘reiterative universalism’, by which nations seeking autonomy respect others also seeking it (1989, 535). A different justification for the ethical significance of nationalism, and one relying not on communitarian principles but on a Millian liberalism, was advocated by a number of philosophers in various forms in the 1990s (Margalit and Raz 1990; Tamir 1993). This ‘liberal nationalism’ generally did not see the nationality principle as a political one, entailing a state as a necessary embodiment of communal life – though this was often the practical outcome of advocating the principle. Instead, nationality was understood as primarily cultural, not political; but there were cultural rights that individuals possessed to live within a culture of their own (Tamir 1991, 565–6). The state was viewed instrumentally as the best means of realising this goal, thus justifying a principle of self-determination. But the crucial move was

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Nat io nal ism, Sel f -Det er minat io n and Sec essio n to view nationalism as simply the instantiation of liberal principles of individual rights, entailed by the primacy of moral personhood. Criticism of the idea that nationalism is ethically mandated or even permissible was not long in coming. In fact, recent attacks at the end of the Cold War had been anticipated by two intellectual historians writing at the end of the colonial era. Elie Kedourie, in his classic work, Nationalism, emphasised the deficiencies of reordering states according to a principle of national self-determination. Echoing Lord Acton’s powerful critique of the Millian view of self-governing nationalities as a norm for determining state boundaries, Kedourie maintained that invoking a principle of self-determination was little more than an invitation to violence and disorder. As he put it in a number of places and ways, good government was always preferable to self-government (see 1960, 135). Taking a somewhat different tack, Alfred Cobban, in a survey of international legal doctrine pertaining to nationality conflicts at the end of the World Wars, argued against the use of national identities as determinative of state sovereignties or boundaries (1970). While maintaining that nation-states were historically exceptional and difficult to establish, Cobban most importantly argued that the identities upon which they were supposedly based were an unstable foundation, since national identities (and the personal identities that they comprised) were malleable and susceptible to constant alteration (ibid., 125). The liberal nationalists’ espousal of nation-states based on stable national cultures was a chimera. In more recent times, different versions of these criticisms of nationalism have been brought to bear by political cosmopolitans and liberals concerned to circumscribe the power of nations, states and nation-states. A prominent view in international ethics today is that of political cosmopolitanism – the view that ethical values are universalisable globally, and that a prominent task is to develop the political institutions capable of instantiating these values. The role of nation-states in realising the cosmopolitan agenda, an agenda that focuses on the protection of human rights and the alleviation of global poverty, is negligible (Pogge 2000; Singer 2002). In fact, arguments for partiality toward co-nationals are regarded as fallacious. This is so in part because nationalism cannot explain the perpetuation of global poverty as a fact about discrete societies or national groups. The global rich are complicit in this poverty (and often the denial of rights, as well) (Pogge 1998, 498–502). But it is also the case that the alleviation of suffering can occur without the rich incurring significant costs; this suggests that they have a duty to alleviate, irrespective of national allegiances. While some nationalists might not deny these claims, they would still insist that there is a hierarchy of obligations, with ones to co-nationals taking priority – even if they do not exclude further or subsidiary obligations. But political cosmopolitans such as Peter Singer seek to deny this view as well. Singer claims that neither ethnic consanguinity nor geographical proximity have ‘any moral significance’ (2002, 166, 168). There are no special or partial obligations to fellow nationals or citizens, due to the increasing mutual interrelations of our ‘global community’ (ibid., 168–170). In fact, in the present situation, with dire survival needs at risk for substantial

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns populations, the needs of foreigners will often trump the needs or claims of conationals, at least for members of the rich countries (ibid., 175). Unlike political cosmopolitans, political liberals do not reject the idea of bounded territorial communities as having ethical significance – they simply deny that nation-states have any special status in this regard. While the reasons for this belief are not always made explicit, Cobban’s view about the instability of ethnonational identities may serve as a justification of the political liberals’ conclusion. John Rawls, for instance, while noting the difference between nations and states, makes the claim that a just society – just, that is, according to the principles of political liberalism – will sufficiently satisfy the legitimate ‘cultural’ needs of national groups within it (1999, 25). Allen Buchanan also introduces the idea of justice as a primary consideration in evaluating the claims of groups to self-determination (1991, 51). He asserts that the claims of national groups to states are clearly unjustifiable on consequentialist grounds, since they would result in extreme political fragmentation and instability. While national groups may, in certain circumstances, have legitimate claims to states, this would only be as a result of a grave injustice done to them, an injustice for which a separate state was a remedy – and a remedy of last resort. In any case, political liberalism cannot sanction a claim-right for national groups, since such a right would have to be justified on grounds (such as the right to a culture or an identity) that are not legitimately determinative of political authority, at least from the point of view of political liberals.

Multinationalism So even if national identities are taken to have ethical significance, this does not necessarily mean that political entitlements follow from this. It may be the case that nationalities are due no more than toleration within sovereign territorial states, which will often be multinational. Yet the recently troubled history of multinational states and their dissolution – from the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires at the beginning of the twentieth century to the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia at the end of it – suggest that such states are fragile and in need of legitimation. This would seem to run contrary to a major tendency in twentieth-century history – the emergence of ethnonational identities and the creation of political movements that seek to foster and institutionalise these identities. This has recently come to be known as ‘identity politics’, and, as Charles Taylor has noted, nationalism was the first form of identity politics (1997, 46). The question of the extent to which national identities can be politically manifest in multinational states was raised particularly by Taylor in his essay, ‘The Politics of Recognition’ (1994). What Taylor espoused in this influential essay was not only the value of toleration for ethnonational groups in multinational states (such as Taylor’s home country of Canada) but of their ‘equal recognition’. In fact Taylor went further, arguing that the ‘cultural survival’ of these groups was what was 398

Nat io nal ism, Sel f -Det er minat io n and Sec essio n most importantly at stake – and ensuring such survival might require governments committed to fostering and protecting cultures, including their languages and customs (ibid., 58–9). This view differed markedly from one that regarded multinational states as superior to nation-states precisely because the former did not identify and separate ethnic groups resident within them, but provided a context within which they could flourish or not, whichever was the case (McNeill 1986). Taylor and others argued that, even if the survival of particular cultures was not immediately at issue, their recognition as equals – especially in relation to other nationalities that might be larger, wealthier or more politically powerful – was a matter of justice. As Will Kymlicka maintained, multinational states could only argue for their own legitimacy if they recognised and enfranchised, rather than ignored and subordinated, the various nationalities within their borders (1995, 189). What does recognition mean in this context? As Alan Patten has written more recently, it must include a measure of self-government for the national group within the state. Self-government means a ‘democratic forum in which [the people in a national group] form a majority and to that extent can think of themselves as making collective decisions together as a group’ (2002, 564–5). Yet, two questions arise: first, where such arrangements do not exist or are prevented from being established by others within the state, is a national group entitled – on the basis of a claim of self-determination – to secede from the multinational state? Second, even if such arrangements are established (or could be established), can a nationality still legitimately claim a state of its own on the basis of a national self-determination principle? Patten voices one view of the matter: ‘there is no right to secede from a perfect state’ (ibid., 563). But there have been others who disagree and assert unilateral claim-rights of one sort or another for nationalities. Such assertions involve, first, establishing a particular meaning of self-determination and, second, advocating a right of secession on the basis of that meaning.

Self-Determination In current international law, after a century or more of disputation, a principle of selfdetermination seems well established. It is, however, a conditional principle, and its referents – who can claim it and when – are still controversial. In general, the peoples who are or can claim to be self-determining are indeterminate; but, once specified, they can lay claim to political independence and a bounded territory. This is, however, conditional in that ‘the principle informs and complements other general principles of international law, viz., of state sovereignty, the equality of States, and the equality of peoples within a State. Thus self-determination is employed in conjunction with the principle of non-intervention’ (Brownlie 2003, 555). Philosophers have had a variety of reactions to this relatively settled doctrine in international law – some affirm it (such as John Rawls), some want to expand it to accommodate the demands of nationalities (for example, Avishai Margalit and 399

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Joseph Raz), some reject it (such as Charles Beitz), and some want to restrict it, since it is regarded as too vague, absent reference to other, antecedent principles (for example, Allen Buchanan). Each of these views will be discussed in turn. Philosophers who support a general principle of self-determination do so because, in Rawls’s words, ‘it is surely a good for individuals and associations to be attached to their particular culture and to take part in its common public and civic life’ (1999, 111). This good means that a world of self-determining (that is, selfgoverning) peoples in a loose confederation is preferable to a more strictly ruled or regulated global regime. But this is so only to the extent that the other conjunctive principles of international law, particularly that of non-intervention, are observed. An entailment of this view is that a patriotic attachment to one’s country is a good and necessary aspect of political life: ‘A proper patriotism is an attachment to one’s people and country, and a willingness to defend its legitimate claims while fully respecting the legitimate claims of other peoples’ (ibid., 111–12). This view of self-determination, which continues to have its advocates (Macedo 2004), is nevertheless attacked for being too restrictive of claimants to self-determination, not restrictive enough, or simply incoherent. Among those who argue for expanding the principle, there are those who argue that, unless it is to simply ratify existing power relations between states, it must be applicable to national groups in general. The principle of self-determination is therefore given a basis in an account of the nature of national groups and the rights that they can claim as a result of their needs for furthering and protecting their identities. On this account, nationalities are the ‘encompassing groups’ within which individuals obtain their individuation and socialisation, in accordance with a culture and way of life (Margalit and Raz 1990, 456–7). States play a necessary role in this process of acculturation; a right to a state is therefore a legitimate claim of encompassing (for example, national) groups. This view, influential as it has been, comprises a number of questionable claims. Three in particular are noteworthy: first, that the claimants of self-determination being encompassing groups somehow resolves the difficulty of who, at any particular time and place, can make a claim; second, that such a claim unproblematically issues a title to territory, whether or not the claimants possess (inhabit) that territory; and third, that self-determination is a claim-right, not a principle based on conditional assessments of well-being and needs (D ahbour 2003, 98–113). These problems have led others to a rejection of a general claim-right of self-determination, though as a conditional and limited claim few would deny its applicability. The classic criticism of this general principle or right of self-determination was made by Charles Beitz in one of the foundational works of contemporary international ethics (1979). In this work, Beitz attacked the idea of ‘state autonomy’, under which were subsumed all arguments for the unconditional rights of political groups or communities. His critique of state autonomy pre-dated recent philosophical defenses of nationalism such as Margalit and Raz’s; it was focused on advocacy of anti-colonialism on the one hand, and on the principle of nonintervention – the negative equivalent to the self-determination principle – on the other. But much of the critique remains pertinent. For instance, in attacking 400

Nat io nal ism, Sel f -Det er minat io n and Sec essio n the idea that groups claiming self-determination could be identified by certain characteristics or features, Beitz writes that no such characteristics or features are sufficient to denote populations with common political preferences or indeed with common political problems (such as persecution or oppression) (ibid., 111). Furthermore, even if such populations could be identified, what has been identified is a group or association of persons; no claim or indeed connection to a particular territory, much less right to it, has been shown. The latter, on his account, requires a separate theory of property rights (ibid., 109). Finally and most importantly, self-determination claims, especially those arising from colonial situations, gain their justification not from the fact that colonialism is non-consensual – since all government is non-consensual to some extent – but from the fact that colonial rule is (or may be) unjust: ‘claims of a right of self-determination … are properly understood as assertions that the granting of independence would help reduce social injustice’ (ibid., 104). These doubts lead to the conclusion that there is no general principle of selfdetermination; at most a claim to self-determination is a means of addressing social problems of a particular kind. Similar worries led Buchanan to conclude that the principle of self-determination as such is too vague to do much work in sorting out conflicting claims of sovereignty. This is because self-determination … is a kind of placeholder for a range of possible principles specifying various forms and degrees of independence. These more specific principles do not express a substantive fundamental value, called self-determination. Instead, the moral force of any particular specification … depends upon the more basic values that implementing it might serve in a particular context (1991, 50). After appearing to draw back from employing the discourse of self-determination at all (because of the problems enumerated above), Buchanan, in his more recent work, has stated that ‘the need for a principled stance on self-determination has never been greater’ (2004, 332). But this ‘principled stance’ should not be the assertion of some fundamental right of self-determination; it should instead be a ‘proposal for an international legal response to claims and counterclaims regarding self-determination’. As Buchanan notes, secession (of groups or regions from existing states) is the ‘most dramatic form assertions of self-determination can take’. So disputes over self-determination should devolve into a theory of secession – and this has indeed been the emphasis of most recent work in this area.

Secession Buchanan, who published the first major study of secession, has more recently provided a helpful typology of views, including his own (1997a). A preliminary distinction can be drawn between views that regard secession as a ‘primary’ right and those (including Buchanan’s) that regard it as a ‘remedial’ right, only. In 401

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns addition, unmentioned in this typology, is the view that there is not, nor should there be, any legal or constitutional right to secession. Within the view of secession as a primary (or fundamental) right, there is a further distinction to be made. Some maintain what Buchanan refers to as an ascriptive-group theory of secession, while others advocate an associative-group theory. These four views – secession for ascriptive groups, for associative groups, as a remedial right, and as no right at all – will be discussed in turn. The notion of an ascriptive group is similar to Margalit and Raz’s concept of the encompassing group; it is a group of persons to which a characteristic or feature can be ascribed that provides a marker of identity (in this instance, nationality). What Buchanan refers to as the ascriptive-group conception of secession is the idea that ascriptive groups have a right to secede and form independent states, under certain conditions. D avid Miller notes the following three such conditions of a legitimate secession: (1) that the group is distinct from another such group that inhabits a state; (2) that the seceding group has a legitimate title to a part of the territory of the state (a title legitimated by their actual habitation of and attachment to the territory); and (3) that no significant damage is done to the ability of the nonseceding group to continue to live in the remainder territory as a ‘viable political community’ (2000, 117–18, 122–4). This view has sustained significant criticism, both from those inclined to different views of legitimate secession and those disinclined to sanction secession as a general right. Buchanan has criticised the ascriptive-nationalist justification of secession because it does not fulfill certain criteria of what he regards as an adequate theory of secession. For instance, one such criterion is that a secession be consistent with just principles of international law, such as the protection of the independence and integrity of other states. Another criterion is that secession should not create ‘perverse incentives’ – for instance, to resist decentralisation by existing governments or to use threats of ‘exit’ (secession) to extract concessions from existing governments (Buchanan 2004, 349–50). A more severe critic of secession is D onald Horowitz, whose influential work on ethnic conflict has led him to conclude that secessions and partitions exacerbate, rather than defuse, conflicts between ethnonational groups. He argues that a better approach to ending conflict than sanctioning secessions is the constitutional reorganisation of multinational states in order to protect minority groups within them (2003). The associative-group conception of secession is derived from a consent theory of political legitimacy, in that groups that are eligible to make secessionist claims are not defined by particular characteristics (as in the ascriptive conception) but by the consent of their members to associate for mutual advantage. There are several versions of this theory currently, but the originator of the idea, Harry Beran, subscribes to what could be called a ‘pure consent’ theory of secession, in which there are no legitimate limits or counter considerations that would overrule the actual consent of persons to associate in a state of their own (1987; 1998). A ‘hybrid consent’ theory has also been proposed, in which other considerations, in particular the continued viability of non-seceding state remnants, must be weighed (Wellman 1995; 2005). 402

Nat io nal ism, Sel f -Det er minat io n and Sec essio n It is doubtful, however, whether either the pure or hybrid theories will assuage critics of this theory of secession. Three criticisms of the theory are apt (Brilmayer 1991; D ahbour 2005, 262–6). First, it does not pass the ‘perverse incentive’ test since, by giving reasons for unilateral withdrawal from prior associations, those associations are undermined by the potentially coercive actions of minorities. Second, the use of plebiscitary mechanisms to render an explicit consent to secession possible violates the majoritarian intent of consent theory. Minority groups (or areas in which minority groups are a majority) must be given exclusive access to voting rights, or secession could virtually never be consensually derived. Third, if secession is a type of right of association, it does not provide a right to territorial possession, without which secessions are impossible. Such criticisms have led some to advocate a conditional theory of secession, most often called the remedial right (only) theory (Buchanan 1997b). In such a theory, secession is legitimate only if it is a remedy of last resort for grave injustices; there is no primary or fundamental claim-right of secession. Injustices are here of three kinds: (1) violations of human rights; (2) ‘discriminatory redistribution’ of wealth and resources (including land) by one group or region from another; and (3) threats to the ‘cultural survival’ of a people. Such a conception, however, as Buchanan seems to acknowledge, requires a full-fledged conception of justice that would justify specific claims of injustice. Furthermore, if the theory is to be operationalised in the international arena, such a theory must command wide, if not universal, assent. One precedent for such assent is the critique of colonialism that was institutionalised in several international legal instruments (Buchanan 1997b, 312–13). But it is not clear that this precedent would be sufficient to suggest the level of unanimity necessary to legitimate a general, though remedial, right to secession. This problem indicates that ‘legalising’ secession might generate problems of its own. Cass Sunstein has argued that secession in fact violates basic principles of constitutional law, and that this is the reason it will prove difficult to institutionalise. He contends that a right of secession would generate ‘continuous risks to selfgovernment’, which it is the purpose of constitutional provisions to encourage and protect self-government (1991, 635). In particular, Sunstein contends that making secession a continual option in constitutional processes would ‘create factionalism, instability, impulsiveness, chaos, stalemate, collective action problems, myopia, strategic behavior, or hostilities so serious and fundamental as to endanger the governmental process itself’ (ibid., 642). The fundamental problem is that legalising secession would encourage groups to use their legal option to secede as a bargaining chip in negotiations with others to extract concessions (D ahl 1989, 196). Others have recently challenged the view that secession is necessarily unconstitutional. On one account, a constitutional right to secession can ‘lower the stakes of political disintegration, so that nations break apart without disaster’ (Brandon 2003, 305). Such a right ought to be legalised so that it can ‘normalise’ a process of state dissolution that may happen in any event. The point is to find a middle course between a general right of secession and no right at all. By adopting a procedural approach to secession, the option may be tamed and constitutional regimes protected from the worst (Weinstock 2001). 403

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Conclusion: Sovereignty What the recent debate about secession and constitutionalism suggests is that there has been a shift in philosophical interest from the justification of an ideal of the nation-state to the investigation of procedures by which such an ideal can be made compatible with existing international law. It may be the case that ethnic nationalism as an historical phenomenon has not yet played itself out, even though at the time of writing we are approaching the completion of two decades after the end of the Cold War and the multiple readjustments of sovereignty that resulted from that event (Muller 2008). But it may also be the case that the philosophical bloom is off the rose of nationalism and that a new consensus is emerging to seek means of replacing an old conception of state sovereignty with something more amenable to the changes that have resulted from the ‘new nationalism’. The outlines of this ‘postnational’ conception of sovereignty have yet to become manifest; they will undoubtedly range from advocacy of various forms of federalism (such as the EU) to that of the devolution of existing states into more small-scaled entities. But while few advocates of the nation-state as such may remain, the nationalism debate in contemporary philosophy will have left its mark in two important ways. First, the importance of sovereign territorial states, however legitimated and however organised, will no doubt continue to be recognised, despite attacks from advocates of various kinds of political cosmopolitanism. This is one consequence of the renewed emphasis on the positive value of statehood by philosophical nationalists. Second, the renewed significance of an international norm of self-determination, though increasingly shorn of any association with nationalism as such, is also a long-term consequence of the debate. In this respect, the nationalism debate renovates certain philosophical lessons learned from the critique of colonialism in the mid-twentieth century; that is, that international law must continue to recognise political freedom as an important determinant of international legitimacy, even if that freedom is interpreted and acted upon in ways not necessarily congruent with prevailing cosmopolitan norms. The result of the nationalism debate may well, therefore, be neither a philosophical nationalism nor internationalism as traditionally conceived, but a new set of ideas about how to conceptualise political self-determination and sovereignty without acquiescing in the old dichotomy between the ideals of a system of nation-states and a regime of global governance.

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Nat io nal ism, Sel f -Det er minat io n and Sec essio n — (1998), ‘A D emocratic Theory of Political Self-D etermination for a New World Order’, in Lehning, P. (ed.), Theories of Secession (London: Routledge). Brandon, M. (2003), ‘Secession, Constitutionalism, and American Experience’, in Macedo and Buchanan (eds). Breuilly, J. (1982), Nationalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Brilmayer, L. (1991), ‘Secession and Self-D etermination: A Territorial Interpretation’, Yale Journal of International Law 16:1, 177–201. Brownlie, I. (2003), Principles of Public International Law, 6th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Buchanan, A. (1991), Secession: The Morality of Political Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec (Boulder, CO: Westview). — (1997a), ‘Theories of Secession’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 26:1, 31–61. — (1997b), ‘Self-D etermination, Secession, and the Rule of Law’, in McKim and McMahan (eds). — (2004), Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Cobban, A. (1970), The Nation State and National Self-Determination (New York: Crowell). Connor, W. (1994), Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). D ahbour, O. (2003), Illusion of the Peoples: A Critique of National Self-Determination (Lanham, MD : Rowman & Littlefield). — (2005), ‘Borders, Consent, and D emocracy’, Journal of Social Philosophy XXXVI:2, 255–72. D ahl, R. (1989), Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Gellner, E. (1983), Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). Gilbert, P. (1998), The Philosophy of Nationalism (Boulder, CO: Westview). Horowitz, D . (1985), Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). — (2003), ‘A Right to Secede?’, in Macedo and Buchanan (eds). Kedourie, E. (1960), Nationalism (London: Hutchinson). Kymlicka, W. (1995), Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Livingston, D . (1998), ‘The Very Idea of Secession’, Society 35:5, 38–48. Macedo, S. (2004), ‘What Self-Governing Peoples Owe to One Another: Universalism, D iversity, and the Law of Peoples’, Fordham Law Review 72:5, 1721–38. — and Buchanan, A. (eds) (2003), Secession and Self-Determination (New York: New York University Press). McKim, R., and McMahan, J. (eds) (1997), The Morality of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). McNeill, W. (1986), Polyethnicity and National Unity in World History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). Margalit, A., and Raz, J. (1990), ‘National Self-D etermination’, Journal of Philosophy 87:9, 439–61.

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Miller, D . (1993), ‘In D efence of Nationality’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 10:1, 3– 16. — (2000), Citizenship and National Identity (Cambridge: Polity Press). Muller, J. (2008), ‘Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism’, Foreign Affairs 87:2, 18–35. Patten, A. (2002), ‘D emocratic Secession from Multinational States’ Ethics 112, 55886. Pogge, T. (1998), ‘The Bounds of Nationalism’, in Couture, J., et al. (eds), Rethinking Nationalism (Calgary: University of Calgary Press). — (2000), ‘The Moral D emands of Global Justice’, Dissent 47:4, 37–43. Poole, R. (1999), Nation and Identity (London: Routledge). Rawls, J. (1999), The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Singer, P. (2002), One World: The Ethics of Globalization (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). Smith, A. (1986), The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell). Sunstein, C. (1991), ‘Constitutionalism and Secession’, University of Chicago Law Review 58:2, 633–670. Tamir, Y. (1991), ‘The Right to National Self-D etermination’, Social Research 58:3, 565–90. — (1993), Liberal Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Taylor, C. (1994), ‘The Politics of Recognition’, in Gutmann, A. (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). — (1997), ‘Nationalism and Modernity’, in McKim and McMahan (eds). Walzer, M. (1977), Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books). — (1983), Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books). — (1989), Nation and Universe: Tanner Lectures on Human Values (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Weinstock, D . (2001), ‘Constitutionalizing the Right to Secede’, Journal of Political Philosophy 9:2, 182–203. Wellman, C. (1995), ‘A D efense of Secession and Political Self-D etermination’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 24:2, 142–71. — (2005), A Theory of Secession: The Case for Political Self-Determination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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PART V THE ETHICS O F A GLO BAL SOCIETY

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24 The Ethics of Global Governance and Global Governance of Ethics James Brassett

Since the publication of Charles Beitz’s Political Theory and International Relations (1979), a trickle of articles and books has now turned into a torrent of publications that deal with what might be called ‘global political theory’ (inter alia Caney 2005; Cochran 1999; Habermas 2001; Held 1995; Held and McGrew 2002; Pogge 2002). While the ethical questions under consideration have remained fairly constant throughout – justice, democracy, equality, and so forth – the ontology of global political theory has shifted somewhat. Previous discussions centred upon the question of ‘international ethics’, the stuff of which was ‘states’, their interrelations, and specific duties towards ‘the poor’. More recently though, global political theory has spawned around a far more complex set of institutions, actors and processes that can be couched under the heading of ‘global governance’ (Brassett and Higgott 2003). This is not just the case for those cosmopolitan democrats whose work naturally gravitates toward the subject of global governance, but also, and increasingly, applies to the work of global justice theorists who grapple at the political and institutional locus for their ideal theory. This chapter deals with the ethical implications, possibilities and limits of this turn to global governance. It takes as its founding assumption the suggestion that global political theory needs to reflect more seriously – and far more critically – upon the question of power relations within global governance if it is to realize the ethical promise bestowed. In short, the ethics of global governance is far from ‘business as usual’ for political theorists and prompts the need for the kind of interdisciplinary engagement now common within international studies, in general, and international relations (IR) and international political economy (IPE), in particular (Higgott and Watson 2008). However, such engagements do not, of themselves, necessitate a ‘happy ending’. Reconstructing the subject in terms of power means that as well as addressing the ethical reform of global governance, we also become sensitive to the global governance of ethical possibility. The category assumptions of much work on global governance – be it ‘the market’, ‘the individual’ or even ‘development’ – can be seen as performances of an essentially circumscribed ethical subject. In

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns this sense the chapter elaborates upon the tensions in the split: ethics of global governance/global governance of ethics. This argument is developed over three sections: the first seeks to define global governance and in so doing moves beyond the current vogue for treating the term as an adornment for research on ‘problem-solving networks’ and/or ‘international organisation’. The ethical implications of global governance are argued to be both analytical – about the site(s) and referent constituencies of ethics – and substantive – concerning the impact of global governance on the life chances of humans, animals and ecology. The second section will address the implicit and sometimes explicit ethical possibilities attributed to global governance by policy-makers, practitioners and scholars. By far the strongest advocates of the ‘potential’ virtues of global governance are the cosmopolitans, and their work on justice, democracy and institutional design will be addressed before looking at the specific arguments of John D ryzek. Finally, section three identifies the ethical limits of – and constituted by – global governance. On the one hand, this involves consideration of the traditional set of critiques levied at ‘global’ studies; namely, communitarian, realist and Marxist. On the other hand, an equally important set of insights can be found in poststructural approaches to global governance. In particular, an emphasis on ‘discourses’ or ‘rationalities’ of global governance can offer up interesting future lines of empirical investigation by focusing on how ethical subjects are actually constituted.

Defining Global Governance (as an Ethical Question) Talk of global governance has proliferated in recent years to describe anything from the activities of the UN Security Council to the relations between peasant farmer collectives and the global market for micro-credit (see inter alia Czempiel and Rosenau 1992; Hewson and Sinclair 1999; Wilkinson 2005;). For some the term carries an essentially mundane connotation, a form of regulation and/or decisionmaking and/or allocation which emerges to cope with the ‘complex world of globalization’. For others, global governance is a significant stage in the continued domination of the South and/or the Earth and/or women by a Northern liberal elite. With such a range of interpretation it may seem that global governance is in the ‘eye of the beholder’. Indeed such a view will be elaborated in section three, albeit in more nuanced terms. However, at this stage, it is still relevant to trace some of the lines of thought which have permeated the literature on global governance. For instance, two images in particular – ‘global governance as problem-solving networks’ and ‘global governance as international organization’ – stand out as important illustrations of how we might proceed. The first and perhaps most widely accepted understanding of global governance regards it as a straightforward term expressing how an essentially benign organizational trope ‘governance’ can be thought in scalar terms of ‘the global’. On this view ‘governance’ is a technical-cum-managerial activity geared towards problem-solving in a complex organizational setting with dispersed authority 410

Et h ic s o f Gl o bal Go ver nanc e (Higgott 2000). The signifier ‘global’ is simply deployed as a label for the expansion of such problem-solving activities across the world. If, as Gerry Stoker (1998, 17) argues, governance involves ‘the development of governing styles in which boundaries between and within public and private sectors have become blurred’ and globalization involves greater social interconnectivity as a result of the spread of market relations across the globe, then problem-solving networks appears as an unproblematic rendering of global governance. Added to this the kind of social theoretic embellishments provided by Manuel Castells (1996) on the importance of global social networks and global governance begins to appear as a straightforward matter of social fact, which ethical theorists should certainly seek to address. The second image of global governance, which is often used in a complementary fashion, essentially views it as a synonym for international organization. This understanding has arguably predominated in the discipline of IR (Keohane 2002) and, perhaps more importantly for this discussion, the work of international political theorists (Bohman 1999; Buchanan and Keohane 2006; Pogge 2002). It elaborates a post-realist concern with international cooperation within bodies like the UN and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in order to show that international politics is not, and should not be, reducible to the self-interest of states. It draws on the arguments of the themes of international interdependence (Keohane and Nye 2000) to emphasize economic globalization, ecological degradation and nuclear proliferation as challenges which both require and, to some extent, constitute transnational cooperation. On this view, the use of the term ‘global governance’ can be seen as a pragmatic way of drawing research on international organization into a more policy-relevant domain. Each of these understandings is clearly important. In positive terms they each provide a glimpse of what the ethics of global governance should be concerned with. Understanding global governance as networks opens a vast amount of empirical detail about contemporary global politics that should be important for ethical analysis. A concern with the ethics of Internet regulation would require scholars to engage directly with bodies like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and so the first image has purchase. Often the predominance of rigorous and abstract theorizing in political theory can lead to an under-emphasis on extant changes associated with global politics. Equally, the second image of global governance, as cooperative international organization, brings forward the important subject of ‘political impact’. Studying formations which might make a genuine impact has obvious attractions for students of ethics for whom challenges like global poverty are so large and mechanisms for addressing them, apparently, so limited. However, what lacks from each of the above approaches to global governance is a consideration of power. Thus far power has either been bracketed out of the discussion of global governance or seen as one (negative) part of the interest of sovereign states to be overcome or ‘manipulated’. The result is a series of incomplete snapshots of global governance, which risks skewing the broader political-ethical discussion to the facilitation of various specific problem-solving networks and/ or the ethics of organizational reform. Absent a consideration of power, it might even be tempting to suggest that we simply ‘splice’ international organization and 411

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns social networks to render a fuller picture? However, as will be argued below, such a move would fail to reflect the full importance that the theory and practice of global governance holds for thinking about both the site and the substance of ethics. For this reason it is necessary to reconceptualize ‘governance’ in terms of power (see Barnett and D uvall 2005). While it might be analytically attractive to take a benign version of governance from organizational behaviour studies and then extrapolate for the globe, such a view ignores power in two ways. Firstly, decision-making within organizations always involves a power relation in the authoritative allocation of resources, time, money and (people’s) energy. Governance is always already about power relations and it is fallacious to proceed otherwise. And secondly, more critically, the move to generalize governance to the global realm is, in part at least, a move which attempts to de-politicize vast areas of human activity. While society was maybe once governed by the state acting in the public interest, we now see a language of public ‘management’ which intersects with – and is strongly encouraged by – the institutions of global governance (see Larner 2004). D rawing these points together, if governance within (private) organizations is a power relation then the extension of global governance into more and more social spheres can be seen as a technique geared towards subjecting more and more people to privatized logics of power. As Jan Aart Scholte warns: Governance has become polycentric under the influence of globalization not only with the diffusion of regulation across multiple ‘levels’ of the public sector, but also by the spread of private, non-statutory frameworks. Given statist conditions of the past, one might easily assume that governance is by definition a public operation through governmental and intergovernmental agencies. However, the formulation, implementation, monitoring and enforcement of societal rules could in principle also occur through nonofficial channels (2004, 33). We therefore need to conceptualize global governance as a set of power relations that extends across multiple levels – individual, local, national, regional and global – and multiple layers, both public and private, and including multiple dimensions – psychological, racial, familial and through gender – in order to avoid the limitations of previous approaches (ibid.). While conceptualizing global governance in terms of such social complexity may appear to some to over-complicate matters, it is here taken as a pre-requisite for thinking about global ethics per se. D efining global governance as social networks would understate the power relations which pervade such networks and that have, in part, fostered their emergence. Therefore ethical discussion about the governance of trade, for instance, would not get stuck in the myopic view that ‘fair trade’ commodity chains are the only viable response to the pathologies of the global trade regime. The more complex view elaborated above would allow for multiple strategies to exist including micro- and macro-reforms and, if necessary, forms of resistance not thinkable in the absence of a concept 412

Et h ic s o f Gl o bal Go ver nanc e of power. Likewise, and moreover, moving beyond the conception of global governance as international organization means that we can drop the outdated opposition between ethics and power which often leads to the conclusion that reform is not possible unless the strong powers agree (Brassett and Higgott 2003). Part of the potential attraction for ethical theorists of global governance should be that it offers interesting new sites and agents of ethics, which allow for plural and imaginative engagements

Global Governance as an Ethical Question Having defined global governance in terms of a complex of power-laden global social relations it is now possible to revisit the question of the ethics of global governance in a more comprehensive manner. At one level, of course, the ethics of global governance is not a new subject. Ethical theorists have long been concerned with how peace and reason might progress through some form of world government (Kant 1948). We should not ignore the rich and venerable history of work on the ethics of international cooperation (Bull 1977). At another level, though, as we have been arguing, globalization, the end of the Cold War and the seemingly unstoppable growth of responsibilities wrested to institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the WTO and the World Bank, as well as private bodies like the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and ICANN, mean that global governance can be understood to present a new set of challenges. It is not simply a case of attempting to ethically steer global governance. Nor is it a question of ‘using’ global governance to achieve certain ends, although such ambitions are laudable. With the special place identified at the heart of global governance for privatized mechanisms and logics, ethical theorists should also reflect on the potential for harm in global governance itself. In this way, the ethics of global governance is both a suggestion of new site(s) and referent constituencies of ethics – institutions, networks, global civil society, the media, and so on – and a substantive shift, concerning the impact of global governance on the life chances of humans, animals and the ecosphere. On this view, global governance and the rationalities which make it up exercise a constitutive power over the very ethical possibilities which are actually ‘thinkable’ in the first instance. The remainder of this chapter will therefore develop a critical examination of the ethical possibilities and limits of global governance. Questions include, but are not limited to the following: • • • •

What ethical possibilities and limits does global governance present? How should we address the yawning gap between competencies and the accountability of global governance to its constituencies? What positive impact can global governance have upon the ethical challenges of global poverty and insecurity? Equally, what negative impacts can global governance have upon the achievement of global ethical objectives? 413

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns •

And how, if at all, does global governance restrict the arc of ethical possibility through the performance of particular rationalities of the individual, the market or the state?

The Ethical Possibilities of Global Governance Having defined global governance and outlined how the ethics of global governance might be considered, this section will now address the more positive views expressed in the literature and policy-making circles as well as the work of cosmopolitan theorists, in particular. D iscourses of global ethics are increasingly prevalent across a range of policy domains, academic disciplines and political perspectives. The former managing director of the IMF, Horst Kohler, neatly quipped that ‘a global world needs global ethics’. Global civil society increasingly focuses its efforts around issues of trade, environmental and tax justice, human rights and democratic accountability that have a direct bearing on the practices of global governance (Smith and Brassett 2008). Indeed, a number of keynote challenges to global governance in Seattle and the ongoing wrangling over the D oha Round of the WTO have exhibited a pronounced ethical flavour. Partly in response to these resistances, practitioners and academics concerned with the evolution of mechanisms of global governance increasingly see the limits of ignoring the importance of ethics and politics. As Richard Higgott argues: ‘Politics, in the context of the emerging global conversation about governance, needs to be understood as not only the pursuit of effective and efficient government, but also as a normative, indeed explicitly ethical, approach to the advancement of a more just agenda of global economic management’ (2000, 133). This mood swing is also felt among economists who, for so long, have attempted to rationalize politics and ethics ‘out’ of policy, in favour of more quantifiable variables like utility and growth. Most famously, D ani Rodrik (2002) identified the political ‘trilemma’ of the global economy as the incompatibility of the continued existence of the nation state (to ensure self-determination), the development of democratic politics beyond the state (to ensure that public policy is accountable) and the continuing economic integration of the global economy to enhance living standards. At best, he argued, we can secure two of these three goals, never all of them, and global markets without global governance are unsustainable. For Rodrik, the current neoliberal agenda reflects an aggressive drive for global economic integration. But such integration sits at odds with the residual strength of nationstates and the clamour for democratic politics. It thus remains neither feasible nor desirable, says Rodrik, to continue towards global economic integration greater than is compatible with the desires of nation-states and the expansion of democratic accountability. For him the alternative is … a renewed Bretton Woods Compromise: preserving some limits on integration, as built into original Bretton Woods arrangements, along with 414

Et h ic s o f Gl o bal Go ver nanc e some more global rules to handle the integration that can be achieved. Those who would make different choices – towards tighter economic integration – must face up to the corollary: either tighter world government or less democracy (2002, 1). Economists like Rodrik present a compromise picture which justifies some level of global governance: in the context of a global(izing) economy and accepting certain principles of political legitimacy global governance ‘should’ be fostered and developed. This recognition of the need to secure some form of political legitimacy for globalization is what motivated initiatives like the Commission on Global Governance (1995) to reflect more deeply on the role that resistance and lobbying by global civil society activists might play. Such arguments have arguably underpinned the rise of ‘popular global ethics’ in movements such as Make Poverty History and Comic Relief (see Brassett 2008). It also spurred a number of marginal shifts in the agenda of the major institutions of global governance associated with the ‘post-Washington consensus’ (Higgott 2000). However, what is absent from this more mainstream discussion of the ethics of global governance is any notion of transformation. Piecemeal changes are arrived at through trial and error. In lieu of a more fundamental vision or set of ethical principles, this approach could risk playing into the logics of privatized governance identified in the first section. For this reason, it is important to address the ethical approaches to global governance found within the work of cosmopolitan authors.

Cosmopolitan Global Governance Cosmopolitan arguments for the reform of global governance proceed with some straightforward and powerful assumptions (Bohman 1999; D ryzek 2006; Held 1995; Held and McGrew 2002). Changes in the extent and intensity of global social relations provoke a set of questions to state-centric political theory. For example, what is the appropriate constituency for global environmental change? How can systems of welfare survive when large global capital is in a position of unfettered mobility? And why do we retain national systems of accountability and legitimacy when it is increasingly global institutions that make the decisions? D avid Held expresses the dilemma as one which unravels previous conceptions of the congruence between territory, community and political legitimacy and brings into question the very possibility of democracy: As substantial areas of human activity are progressively organized on a global level, the fate of democracy and of the independent democratic nation-state in particular, is fraught with difficulty. In this context, the meaning and place of democratic politics, and of the contending models of democracy, have to be rethought in relation to overlapping local, national, regional and global structures and processes (1995, 21).

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns The response made by many cosmopolitans is to articulate forms of multi-level governance that promote maximal accountability and facilitate the inclusion of as many relevant actors as possible. In this way, a stronger normative edge is brought to bear on the definition of global governance. While liberal cosmopolitans develop accounts of the appropriate cosmopolitan legal structures that would underpin this system (Archibugi and Held 1995), others, like the deliberative democrats, have been more concerned with the practice of building cosmopolitan public spheres (Bohman 1999; D ryzek 2006; Habermas 2001). These arguments build upon ‘actually existing’ sites of interaction between global civil society and global economic institutions, promoting cosmopolitan reasons and cosmopolitan publicity (Bohman 1999). Both approaches assume that the cosmopolitan ethical reform of global governance is both possible and desirable. Again with a broad domain of interest that encompasses the governance of security, ecology, trade, finance, communications and citizenship it may be hard to grasp what is at stake in cosmopolitan global governance? When taken in light of Thomas Pogge’s (2002) ambitious argument for a Global Resources D ividend, to acknowledge and partly atone for the harm committed by the global basic structure (read global markets plus global institutions in the context of a history of colonialism), cosmopolitan global governance may appear as something of a wish list. This is not a critique so much as an exhortation to build up the cosmopolitan armoury by further developing these different areas within the paradigm. For instance, a number of recent approaches have sought to extend cosmopolitan principles to the reform of global finance (Coleman and Porter 2000; Germain 2001; 2002; 2004; Porter 2001; Scholte 2002). While the complex and technical nature of finance may strike many ethical theorists as a strange place to begin an ethical discussion, it is clear that the dimensions and scope of contemporary global finance make it no less important in ethical terms. Global finance is a paradigm case of globalization. In temporal terms the rise of global finance in the second half of the twentieth century reflects the time line of many accounts of accelerated contemporary globalization (Held et al. 1999; Scholte 2005). In terms of size and speed, global finance provides a good illustration of the importance and impact of global economic interdependence. And for cosmopolitans concerned with the migration of authority away from states, the role of bodies like the IMF, the World Bank and BIS in the setting of financial rules policies is a major challenge (Underhill 1997). In response, cosmopolitans have suggested that the global financial architecture should be reformed to increase transparency, participation, representation and fairness (Coleman and Porter 2000; Scholte 2002). For his part Randall Germain (2004) has advocated the development of deliberative principles in line with the work of Bohman, suggesting that an ‘ethic of inclusion’ can be fostered. And Heikki Patomaki (2001) has drawn on Rawlsian theories of justice to advocate a re-distribution of revenue from financial market actors to the global south. From this brief analysis, it is clear that the cosmopolitan paradigm is a rich and suggestive ethical approach to global governance. Cosmopolitans express interesting possibilities related to justice, democracy and institutional design which allow us to conceive of global governance in a more transformative way. 416

Et h ic s o f Gl o bal Go ver nanc e While cosmopolitans are not without their critics (Patomaki 2003; VaughanWilliams 2007) – and partly for reasons suggested in the first section regarding the under-emphasis on power in contemporary global governance and a subsequent acceptance of current institutional logics – it is clear that they provide one of the most comprehensive accounts of the ethical possibilities of global governance. While the work of cosmopolitans like D avid Held and James Bohman is addressed elsewhere in this volume by William Smith, this section will now focus in detail on the work of one deliberative cosmopolitan, namely John D ryzek.

Deliberative Global Governance John D ryzek is important for this discussion because he explicitly ties his ethic of deliberation to the contingent and reflexive question of what global governance ‘is’ and should be doing. He therefore eschews any set ontological limit as to what the ethics of global governance might mean in favour of a more political account. D ryzek identifies ‘discourses’ as the object of deliberation and global civil society as the principal agent of deliberation. D eliberation is important because it constitutes a means of reflexively challenging the discourses that order and structure complex processes of global governance: ‘democratic governance in the international system must … look very different from democratic government within states’ (2006, 161). This claim is supported through D ryzek’s acceptance of the idea that the international realm is best understood as embodying ‘governance without government’ (ibid. 1999, 33). This means that it lacks the stable hierarchical structures or ‘sovereign centres of power’ that can be found in domestic democratic regimes. In the absence of this sort of ‘government’ the international order relies more on ‘governance’ defined as ‘the creation and maintenance of order and the resolution of joint problems in the absence of … binding decision structures’ (ibid. 2000, 120). In this sense D ryzek is very close to the definition of global governance arrived at in section one. Against liberal cosmopolitanism D ryzek criticizes the aspiration to recreate institutions of the nation-state at transnational and global levels, suggesting that such a move would merely replicate the vicissitudes of those institutions on a much larger scale: specifically problems of ‘constitutional excess’ and ‘excessive administration’ (ibid. 2006, 136–43). Instead he draws on a novel interpretation of deliberative or ‘discursive’ democracy as a basis for his radical reformist agenda (ibid. 2000, 3). D ryzek’s approach emphasizes the key role that discourses can play in shaping governance in the international system. He defines a discourse as … a shared set of concepts, categories, and ideas that provide its adherents with a framework for making sense of situations, embodying judgements, assumptions, capabilities, dispositions, and intentions. It provides basic terms for analysis, debates, agreements, and disagreements. Its language enables individuals who subscribe to it to compile the bits of information they receive into coherent accounts organized around storylines that can be shared in intersubjectively meaningful ways (ibid. 2006, 1). 417

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns The list of examples he gives includes ‘market liberalism’, ‘globalization’, ‘realism’, ‘sustainable development’ and ‘human rights’ (ibid., 2). D iscourses play a key role in orientating or ‘coordinating’ the various regimes, behavioural norms and cooperative arrangements that comprise practices of global governance. Global policy agendas and decisions are often determined according to the outcome of contests between competing discourses. According to D ryzek, projects for democratizing global governance should focus on democratizing these discourses. He contrasts his approach to those which emphasize ‘high-level’ deliberation within formal processes of negotiation: he has in mind the kind of deliberation that takes place between state representatives or within institutions like the UN. This kind of deliberation is criticized as insufficiently democratic, because it does not provide ‘opportunities for participation by all those affected by a decision’ (ibid., 27). Against this approach, D ryzek looks to another strand in deliberative democratic theory ‘which looks to the potential for diffuse communication in the public sphere that generates public opinion that can in turn exercise political influence’ (ibid.). His hope is that civil society activists and non-governmental organizations can act as bearers of democratic values within transnational public spheres. They can perform this function insofar as they are able to criticize, contest and change the terms of dominant discourses or the balance of power between competing discourses (ibid. 2000, 131). Finally, civil society actors should contest discourses in such a way that they increase the scope for ‘reflexive action’ (ibid. 2006, 115). This means that they educate publics about the nature and terms of dominant discourses, reveal their contingent and changeable nature, and encourage a process of critical reflection on their adequacy and acceptability.

The Ethical Limits of Global Governance A complex and nuanced picture of the ethics of global governance has been suggested. Instead of falling into the possible trap of reifying neoliberal logics of privatized global governance, it is possible to address the ethics of global governance in reflexive and critical fashion. This approach is typified in the assumptions and suggestions of deliberative global governance: rather than assuming the site and substance of global ethics – as is perhaps the case with liberal cosmopolitan approaches – D ryzek focuses attention toward the contingent exploration, negotiation and contest of global governance. This final section will now look at the range of critical positions on global governance which are relevant to, and should probably be considered in far more explicit terms by, ethical theorists.

Traditional Critiques The traditional critiques of the more ambitious approaches to the ethics of global governance can be read under the separate, though substantively interrelated, 418

Et h ic s o f Gl o bal Go ver nanc e headings of communitarian, realist and Marxist perspectives. These critiques tend to take one of two lines. Either they suggest that the thick moral ties necessary to form a coherent polity are only felt within discrete social spheres, thus restricting the extent to which the ethics of global governance can be extended. Or they argue that where global governance does exist, it is usually underpinned by a logic of market and/or state self-interest which negates the possibility of fostering any form of ethical alternative. Communitarian and realist arguments suggest that the universalism of some forms of cosmopolitanism are either an inaccurate depiction of reality or, worse, one that could hasten a form of imperialism through ignorance to the social mores of different cultures (Sandel 1982; Walzer 1983). While globalization has been related to the transnational spread of communications and social relations, the idealistic view that this will result in some form of cultural homogeneity is severely questioned by the resurgence of religious, nationalist and ethnic politics in the post-Cold War world. Indeed, many Southern and critical European scholars have challenged the liberal discourse of socioeconomic global governance as an instance of Western (or more specifically, American) imperialism (Bello 2005). Instead, the communitarian tradition seeks to locate its ethical framework within the ‘polis’ as opposed to some external foundation. They understand the individual as the product of contingent social relations of a community. More fundamentally, communitarian thinkers locate moral value in the very social relations and the institutions they produce. Thus the modern values of liberty, equality and justice are not understood as abstract standards against which institutions, like the state or market, can be judged. Rather, ethics are seen as constituted within those very institutions. Whereas a strong communitarian or realist would question global governance according to the self-interest of particular states, a Marxist analysis would provide a more fundamental position: global governance, including the various ‘competing’ states within it, is epiphenomenal to capitalism. On this view, a Marxist account can be extended to provide a very negative critique of the possibility of an ‘ethical’ approach to global governance. Marx himself was famously sceptical of justice and the materialist bent of many contemporary Marxist analyses of globalization suggests that ethics could only ever be little more than an apology for the imperialism of global governance (Harvey 2003). The Marxist position really has two lines of critique that are relevant for the consideration of the ethics of global governance. Firstly, as mentioned, it would regard a cosmopolitan account of global governance as one which essentially reifies the structures of global capitalism. On this view cosmopolitanism both accepts and therefore perpetuates a neoliberal account of globalization, thus leaving unquestioned the marketization of social life, and provides mechanisms to legitimize the emerging administration of capitalism: global governance. And secondly, in line with the arguments elaborated in section one, a Marxist critique of the reform of global governance would go deeper to analyse the role of private authority in setting the substantive agenda of global politics. Put simply, even if you could reform the WTO to become more democratic in its procedures, there is 419

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns little chance that this would affect the real centres of power in global governance – that is, multinational corporations and their representative bodies.

Poststructural Critiques For poststructuralists, ethics is not something that can be ‘added on’ to world politics (Walker 1993). Ethics must be seen as a constitutive force in social reality. Rather than trying to provide reasons for, or against, a particular ethical account of global governance, the poststructural charge is to think through and address its political implications. More specifically, a poststructural approach to global governance would question how ethical subjects are constituted by particular discourses or rationalities. Thus, instead of asking how global governance might be reformed to help the global poor, a poststructural perspective would be concerned with how that very question constructs a subject – ‘the poor’ – as helpless, empty of political agency, and ‘global governance’ as the political centre apparent (see Edkins 2000). Perhaps more than any other approach poststructuralism points us towards an evaluation of the actual content of ‘ethics’. Rather than assuming a straight split – ethics equals good, politics equals bad – poststructural authors blur those distinctions. For instance, at his most categorical Nietzsche (1998, 8) suggests: … we stand in need of a critique of moral values, the value of these values itself should first of all be called into question. This requires a knowledge of the conditions and circumstances of their growth, development and displacement (morality as consequence, symptom mask … illness, misunderstanding: but also morality as cause, cure, stimulant, inhibition, poison. This view is updated and applied to the re-emergence of cosmopolitan ethics by Rob Walker (2003, 68) who argues that cosmopolitanism should be read as a constitutive element of the very problems it seeks to address. Simply put, by defining ‘what the problem is’ and suggesting ‘ways to solve it’ any ethical framework must thereby identify the boundaries of possible futures. This line of thinking can echo the concerns of Marxists cited above. In a critique of what he calls the ‘cosmopolitan ideal’, Nick Vaughan-Williams (2007) draws out three points of weakness. First, he identifies the problem of an implicit, and often explicit, teleology in cosmopolitan thought that poses a linear progression from polis to cosmopolis. Second, and relatedly, he critiques the Euro-centricity of the cosmopolitan ideal, whose ‘narrative of the unfolding of nature leading to the victory of reason that in turn leads to the emergence of a society of nations cannot be read outside the context of modernity and European colonialism’ (ibid., 113). And finally, he argues that cosmopolitanism actually re-produces the state-centric political narrative it seeks to overcome. Taking the example of cosmopolitan hospitality towards foreigners – a key tenet of many attempts to increase the scope of ethical concern – he argues that this hospitality is always already limited, conditional upon and policed by the laws of 420

Et h ic s o f Gl o bal Go ver nanc e the state. While hospitality would at first sight appear to increase the rights of a ‘citizen of the world’ over and above the state, in fact, the limited hospitality of the ‘cosmopolitan ideal’ simply reprises the centrality of the state in our thinking of the ethics in world politics. Again, although Held recognizes and responds to these problems through increasing universal hospitality in a context of cosmopolitan global governance, the state still remains at the heart of his ideal. And ‘[t]his is problematic since it is precisely the state that produces the foreigner, immigrant, exiled, deported, or stateless person in need of greater levels of hospitality in the first place’ (ibid., 115). The implication of this kind of thinking is that cosmopolitan ethics in global governance may actually reify the world it seeks to reform. In this way, a poststructural critique of global governance focuses on a study of the evolution of the ethical subject – and asks the question of how that subject can be thought differently. To think about the ethics of global governance in this way takes us beyond the binaries – likely versus unlikely, ethical versus self-interest – identified by traditional critiques. Instead, research is geared towards a critical understanding of the way in which ethical frameworks establish a set of limits. T hese are limits to the ethically thinkable world and are therefore of political ethical importance for study. This kind of idea can be found in D errida’s work on the deconstruction of ethical discourse. It could also be found in some of Foucault’s work on the history of the constitution of subjects like ‘madness’, ‘civilization’ and ‘delinquency’. However, this section will conclude by focusing on the thought of Judith Butler and suggesting some ways in which it might be applied to a study of the ethics of global governance. In Precarious Life Judith Butler suggests that the potential for an ethical response to 9/11, to terrorism and to suffering is curtailed by the monopolization of the legitimate meaning of 9/11 in public discourse (see Brassett 2008). The very possibility of questioning the mainstream narrative of the attacks is cut off by logics like ‘with us or against us’. D eeper understandings, mourning for the loss of life, mourning for the other and the possibility of even recognizing the suffering of others are (often) curtailed. Butler therefore places the performance and ‘politics of mourning’ at the forefront. It is here argued that such an approach can be seen as congruent with, and even a prerequisite to, thinking the possibilities for global ethics. For instance, no disavowal of the cosmopolitan response is made. Indeed, it may even be a way to enlarge ‘our understanding of what the cosmopolitan project still must grapple with’ (McRobbie 2006, 70). In specific terms for thinking about the ethics of global governance, Butler asks how the ethical subject is constituted in the first place. As Moya Lloyd recounts: Judith Butler proposes the idea of gender performativity: gender not as an expression of what one is, but gender as something that one does: ‘the stylized repetition of gender through time … It is not in a single act of constitution or invention that the subject is brought into being but through re-citation and repetition’ (1999, 3–4).

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Just as a ‘politics’ of mourning, of what it means to mourn publicly, has infiltrated responses to 9/11 in the US – by associating it with the nation, placing the flag at the centre of all acts of remembrance – so might we start to regard global governance as a set of performances? For instance, the dramatic tone of WTO negotiations, at least, performs the importance of the governance of global trade. But it further constitutes ethical possibility in a number of ways: the ‘global’ ethics of ‘global’ trade relies heavily on a number of very state-centric protagonists – such as the US and the EU ‘versus’ the BRICS (Brazil, India, China, South Africa). In this way, it can be seen to perform the image of global governance as international organization in quite a pernicious way. Likewise, the ethics of ‘fair trade’ is reduced to a discussion of eliminating farm subsidies, thus performing global capitalist agricultural arrangements as an ethical good. If the ethical subject of the D oha Round really is ‘people living in poverty’, it is hard to see the importance of farm subsidies for subsistence farmers, for instance. The central effect of removing subsidies would be the rapid industrialization and capitalization of agricultural production in the developing world. Contract labour would spread to more areas and dependency on global markets would increase. The implications of this kind of thinking are important and as yet barely articulated. As the theory and practice of global governance proceeds apace ethical scholars face the challenge of both recognizing this new formation, but also approaching it with caution. The performance of power within global governance can skew the boundaries of ethical debate to an essentially circumscribed list of subjects. Ultimately, this split – ethics of global governance/global governance of ethics – is not easily deconstructed. Ethical theorists could well want to avoid the implication that their interventions might further constitute, or perform, the very inequalities and violences which they seek to ameliorate. Equally, poststructural scholars might balk at their insights being enlisted for an engagement with (piecemeal) ethical reformism. However, as the power-laden formation of global governance assumes a role in more and more areas of life, the stakes are probably high enough to warrant engagement over the prior question of what the ethics of global governance ‘is’ and ‘could be’.

References Archibugi, D ., and Held, D . (eds) (1995), Cosmopolitan Democracy: an Agenda for a New World Order (Cambridge: Polity). Barnett, M., and D uvall, R. (2005), Power in Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Beitz, C. (1979), Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Bello, W. (2005), Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy (London: Zed Books).

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Et h ic s o f Gl o bal Go ver nanc e Bohman, J. (1999), ‘International Regimes and D emocratic Governance: Political Equality and Influence in Global Institutions’, International Affairs 75:3, 499– 513. Brassett, J. (2008), ‘Cosmopolitanism vs. Terrorism? D iscourses of Ethical Possibility Before, and After 7/7’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 36:2, 121–47. — and Higgott. R. (2003), ‘Building the Normative D imension(s) of a Global Polity’, Review of International Studies 29, 29–55. Buchanan, A. and Keohane, R. (2006), ‘The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions’, Ethics & International Affairs 20:4, 405–37. Bull, H. (1977), The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan). Butler, J. (2006), Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso). Caney, S. (2005), Justice Beyond Borders: A Global Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Castells, M. (1996), The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell). Cochran, M. (1999), Normative Theory and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Coleman, W.D ., and Porter, T. (2000), ‘International Institutions, Globalisation and D emocracy: Assessing the Challenges’, Global Society 14:3, 377–98. Commission on Global Governance (1995), Our Global Neighbourhood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Czempiel, E. and Rosenau, J. (1992), Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). D ryzek, J.S. (1999), ‘Transnational D emocracy’, Journal of Political Philosophy 7:1, 30–51. — (2000), Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals Critics Contestations (Oxford: Oxford University Press). — (2006), Deliberative Global Politics: Discourse and Democracy in a Divided World (Cambridge: Polity). Edkins, J. (2000), Whose Hunger? Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press). Germain, R. (2001), ‘Global Financial Governance and the Problem of Inclusion’, Global Governance 7: 4, 411–26. — (2002), ‘Reforming the International Financial Architecture: The New Political Agenda’, in Wilkinson, R., and Hughes, S. (eds), Global Governance: Critical Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge). — (2004), ‘Globalising Accountability within the International Organisation of Credit: Financial Governance and the Public Sphere’, Global Society 18:3, 217– 42. Habermas, J. (2001), The Postnational Constellation (Cambridge: Polity Press). Harvey, D . (2003), The New Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Held, D . (1995), Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press).

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Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns — et al. (1999), Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Cambridge: Polity Press). — and McGrew, A. (eds) (2002), Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press). Hewson, M., and Sinclair, T. (1999), Approaches to Global Governance Theory (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press). Higgott, R. (2000), ‘Contested Globalization: the Changing Context and Normative Challenges’, Review of International Studies 26:5, 131–54. Higgott, R., and Watson, M. (2008), ‘All at Sea in a Barbed Wire Canoe: Professor Cohen’s Transatlantic Voyage in IPE’, Review of International Political Economy 15:1, 1–17. Kant, I. (1948), Perpetual Peace (New York: Liberal Arts Press). Keohane R. (2002), Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World (New York: Routledge). — and Nye, J. (2000), Power and Interdependence, 3rd edn (New York: Longman). Larner, W. (2004), Global Governmentality (New York: Routledge). Lloyd, M. (1999), ‘Performativity, Parody, Politics’, Theory, Culture and Society, 16:2, 195–213. McRobbie, A. (2006), ‘Vulnerability, Violence and (Cosmopolitan) Ethics: Butler’s Precarious Life’, The British Journal of Sociology 57:1, 69–86. Nietzsche, F. (1998), On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Patomaki, H. (2001), Democratising Globalisation: the Leverage of the Tobin Tax (London: Zed Books). — (2003), ‘Problems of D emocratizing Global Governance: Time, Space and the Emancipatory Process’, European Journal of International Relations 9:3, 347–76. Pogge, T. (2002), World Poverty and Human Rights: Cosmopolitan Responsibilities and Reforms (Cambridge: Polity Press). Porter, T. (2001), ‘The Democratic Deficit in the Institutional Arrangements for Regulating Global Finance’, Global Governance 7:4, 427–38. Rodrik, D . (2002), ‘Feasible Globalizations’, Harvard Working Paper, at . Sandel, M.J. (1982), Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Scholte, J.A. (2002), ‘Governing Global Finance’, in Held, D ., and McGrew, A. (eds), Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press). — (2004) ‘Globalization and Governance: From Statism to Polycentrism’, CSGR Working Paper No. 130/04. — (2005), Globalization: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edn (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Smith, W., and Brassett, J. (2008), ‘D eliberation and Global Governance: Liberal, Cosmopolitan and Critical Perspectives’, Ethics & International Affairs 22:1, 69– 92.

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Et h ic s o f Gl o bal Go ver nanc e Stoker, G. (1998), ‘Governance as Theory: Five Propositions’, International Social Science Journal 50:155, 17–28. Underhill, G.R.D . (ed.) (1997), The New World Order in International Finance (New York: Macmillan). Vaughan-Williams, N. (2007), ‘Beyond a Cosmopolitan Ideal: The Politics of Singularity’, International Politics 44:1, 107–24. Walker, R.B.J. (1993), Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). — (2003), ‘Polis, Cosmopolis, Politics’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 28:2, 267–87. Walzer, M. (1983), Spheres of Justice (Oxford: Robertson). Wilkinson, R. (ed.) (2005), The Global Governance Reader (London: Routledge).

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25 Understanding and Analysing Social Movements and Alternative Globalization Martin Weber

In this chapter, my main purpose is to contribute to refining our understanding of the role, significance and limitations of social movement politics in the global context, and to do so in such a way as to make what I consider to be an intrinsic link between ‘ethics’ and ‘politics’ in this context more explicit. The first part of the chapter tracks a range of problems in the contemporary analytical imaginary, and makes the case for a more thorough approach, integrating insights from critical theory, post-colonial thought, and recent developments in political philosophy influenced by both. In the second part, I provide a rough outline of this alternative approach and suggest a possible reading of emancipatory social struggle (which is really always political struggle), capable of sidestepping the problematic legacy of modernization theory within many contemporary approaches to sociopolitical struggle inflected by theories of justice. In the third and final part, I turn to the alter-globalization movement in order to suggest what an analysis thus enhanced may have to offer to those interested in gauging the ethicopolitical substance of the challenge posed by movements among this broad cluster.

Globalization, Movements and Ethics The task of putting ‘politics’ and ‘ethics’ back together is analytically as daunting as it seems obviously and easily integrated from the perspective of practitioners. While specialist analysts labour under the weight of differentiations, pitching not only politics against ethics (as bequeathed by the Machiavellian imaginary), but morality against substantive, ethical life (as in the Kant-Hegel constellation), positive norms against normative theory, and questions of justice against notions of expediency, movement activists seemingly have no problems conceiving of

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns their struggles in the idiom of justice, and of their actions in terms of justification informed by ‘higher purposes’. Now, it is clear that taking the activist’s word for it, so to speak, would lead to little more than undesirable sociological accounts of ethics, bound to noting the ‘values’ espoused by activists involved in various forms of sociopolitical struggle but setting up little more than a juxtaposition of those with alternative ones, including those of the very hegemonic constellation which is being fought. Somehow, then, the issue of finding the requisite criteria according to which the intrinsic ethical ‘worth’ of challenges posed by sociopolitical struggle simply will not fade easily into the background, even where comprehensive attempts are made to translate the noted forms of sociopolitical agency into an analytical framework based on, for instance, conceptions of (self-)interest, as is customary in much political science beholden broadly to the legacy of pluralism (MacPherson 1973; Robinson 1996). The question of the substantively ethical content of movement politics, which has great implications for both, gauging their importance and evaluating (or possibly meeting or countering) their strategies and tactics, hence seems to invite as many answers as there are contending social and political philosophical positions, and is complicated by the fact that ‘movement analysis’ cannot be done without supplementing the sociological gravity of including the actors and their perspectives themselves. In the case of the alter-globalization cluster of movements, which is the subject of our inquest here, such analytical difficulties are compounded by the very amorphousness of an actor agglomeration reaching through the domains of settled sociological analytics, whether these be circumscribed in terms of national societies, class alliances, cultural and/or linguistic communities or ‘interest groups’. With sociological and social theoretic understandings of solidarity still predominantly framed by the organic understanding of affinities constituted of shared values and life project contexts (D urkheim may be seen to extend a godfatherly influence here), movement alliances which accommodate a great degree of diversity and difference fall beside the analytical capacity of much entrenched social science, something which is all the more obvious the more nuance is required by the actions under investigation. A useful indicator of this ‘missing literature’ is the relatively poor coverage of one of the most successful solidarist political movements of the past decades, one premised explicitly on solidarity in difference, namely the global ‘Fourth World’ network of indigenous groups (Shaw 2003; Ivison 2002; Shilliam 2008). ‘Solidarity in diversity’, documented clearly within the political registers of Fourth World activism, as well as with regard to the movement’s successes in driving identity- and cultural integrity-oriented political idioms into the arena of world politics, presents thus as much an empirical challenge as the implied conceptual one for entrenched social science approaches. The situation is, taken from the empirical side, even trickier with regard to studies on the ‘alter-globalization cluster’, where analytical difficulties are clearly reinforced by the pervasive practice of attaching spatial logics to the kinds of agency displayed through solidarist activism in this context. More often than not, alter-globalization activism is routinely associated with particular global regions. It is not untypical for this issue to be simply obliterated in current analysis, but 428

So c ial Mo vement s and Al t er nat ive Gl o bal izat io n not paying attention to it leads to immediate repercussions, which render the mobilized analytical imaginary underpinned by ‘classical’ socio-spatial concepts idiosyncratic. Consider, for example, the statement in an otherwise nevertheless informative treatment of contending positions on ‘globalization and poverty’ that: … the most strident and vocal critiques of globalization do not come from the South, but from certain intellectual circles in affluent North America and Europe. Hence, the debates reflect a North–North gap (that is, a transatlantic rift about different versions of globalization confronting the United States and some European countries) as well as domestic debates within the United States or a given European country. Although there have been many protests about the effects of globalization in the United States and Europe, it should be pointed out that a large number of voices from the South avidly look for foreign investments and international trade (Kacowicz 2007, 577). The temptation for a critically inclined reader may well be simply to dismiss this as part of an interested discourse, invested in shoring up a liberal conception of global governance by denouncing the protectionism of the global North. I do not think this particularly helpful, nor would this fit with the overall inclinations of the article, which is much more given to heuristic than to political posturing. What is much more interesting, and, I would suggest, symptomatically so, is the analytical imaginary which is on display in these few lines. The gist of what is said here is sustained on the basis of a spatial ordering conceived out of the mainstays of methodological territorialism (Weber and Berger 2007), and invested with a correlating conception of collective agency that considers politically efficacious discourse to be located with elites in proximity to ‘the state’. Rather than indict the obvious ‘transatlanto-centrism’ of the quoted passage, I would like to suggest that the conclusions the author draws are the ones which necessarily need to be drawn where the social ontological scaffolding onto which the analysis is grafted is premised on this understanding of spatial and agential distribution. Where any attempt is made to grasp the dynamics of movement politics in the global context through such an analytic, the results are likely to be similarly distorted; for there can be no doubt that the assessment contained in the cited passage is plainly wrong. Whether deliberate (as part of a politically interested and invested argument) or coincidental (as the result of an unreflected reproduction of the stock of conceptual tools available from the discipline of IR), the passage misconstrues ‘stridency’ and ‘political voice’ in terms of proximity, reinforcing both analytically and culturally comfortable readings of political struggle based on a (false) notion of the historically familiar. It manifestly misses the point, as even the most cursory exploration would readily reveal already from an empirical perspective. If the early twentieth century saw the political awakening of workers movements and union activism in Europe and the US, the late twentieth century and early twenty-first have seen the rise of educationally inflected movements in 429

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns peasant communities (widely, and with long-standing traditions, in India, but also in parts of Africa and Latin America, as well as, more recently in China). In parts of the ‘Global South’, ‘anti-globalization’ movement politics has taken much more self-conscious forms of understanding, tracking and challenging the multiple overlays of political authority and social power invested in local, state and global governance than is customary within most ‘Western’ movements (the efforts by, for instance, ATTAC notwithstanding). For the purpose of the exploration below – which looks into the question of how to begin to conceive of the ethical import of movement politics, the implication of sociopolitical struggle in normatively inflected communication (verbal and non-verbal), and the significance of movement agency with regard to the more general, unavoidable task of exploring the roles of judgement, legitimation and contestation involving informal collective actors under conditions of asymmetry – I want to suggest that the example above is instructive for at least two central reasons. Firstly, it signals what remains one of the most severe obstacles in the study and evaluation of movement politics; namely, the ways in which much of such analysis remains closely tied to undertheorized, but routinely reproduced mainstays of mainstream modern social and political theory. While the liberal tradition, with preeminence given to the pursuit of goals mainly private to individuals (Weber 2007), displays a clear bias against the analysis of collective agency as anything other than suspicious instantiations of sociopolitical impositions on individual self-realization anyhow, there are crucial limitations in the critical tradition as well. The latter’s formative influence, disseminated mainly through the legacy of Marx, has carried with it significant limitations with regard to the conception of political agency, despite explicitly aiming to sanction collective action. Marx, following in this case Hegel, could not conceive of political action (never mind change) as issuing from what both termed ‘the rabble’. The rabble, or the poor reduced to their status as receivers of alms by the very workings of bourgeois society, lack, according to both Hegel and Marx, the requisite resources to develop properly political consciousness, and hence the capacity to develop anything like ‘proper’ moral (Hegel) or revolutionary (Marx) social political agency. This imaginary has stayed with us generally, and has influenced also the appropriation of Marxist thought in the context of struggles for decolonization. Its continued plausibility is shored up, for instance, with regard to the literature and public policy pronouncements on the ‘welfare trap’, and in the 



ATTAC stands for ‘Association for the Taxation of Financial Transaction for the Aid of Citizens’. The groups emerged prominently in the context of the concerted resistance to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment in the 1990s. In the meantime, ATTAC has graduated to a widespread grassroots movement dedicated predominantly to civic education regarding economic governance issues. The welfare trap has generally been considered in the context of its economic implications. The idea that welfare recipients, when finding employment with low returns, may find themselves not better off as a result of the correlating reduction in their welfare payments, has been seen to create perverse incentives. This is generally interpreted to shore up long-term unemployment in industrialized societies, leading to the gradual entrenchment of an urban ‘underclass’ with no or few stakes in social 430

So c ial Mo vement s and Al t er nat ive Gl o bal izat io n context of progressive politics where a Marxist version of modernization theory is integral (such as India’s dam projects; see Weber and Berger 2007). This sets up a bruising encounter with the arguments emerging from post-colonial thought, and nothing could be more instructive in this context than considering the challenge brought forward by Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth. In some of the most forceful passages ever written on the struggle against domination, Fanon pitches the actions of the ‘lumpen-proletariat’ as the constitutive source of the emergence of postcolonial nationhood, calling into question that tradition outlined below, which had consigned the masses outside formal contractual relations to passivity, and hence rendered ‘them’ into objects of policy attention. One would not have to follow Fanon’s analysis to the letter to appreciate, not least in the contemporary context, the problematization of the use of exclusive sociological categories (such as class, spatial distribution or educational background) in order to mark off sites of sociopolitical agency from the presumed spheres of passive suffering and subjection. Thus, for instance, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST, the ‘landless movement’) in Brazil, squatters on under-used haciendas and on government lands, are not predominantly constituted of rural peasants, but largely of urban poor drawn from the slums and shanties of Brazil’s overpopulated metropolitan areas. Secondly, we are confronted with the question of the normative implications of the practice of rendering groups, identities or classes as ‘patients’, rather than agents with reference to their life situations. To grasp how the exposition above is relevant to any concern with the ethics of the ‘alter-globalization’ cluster, some more context is necessary. Thus far, we have seen to what extent the analytical imaginaries, both orthodox and to some degree the heterodox ones too, pose obstacles for studying such movements as expressions of significant political agency with potential ethical import. A further layer ought to be added to this picture, one which will take us a step closer towards the normative vocabulary with which the ‘ethics’ question will have to be addressed. It is clear that the power of movements such as those comprised in the alter-globalization cluster is drawn to a significant degree also from the diverse and often diffuse solidarities their respective causes attract. This connects activists in the ways stipulated already above in the context of the ‘Fourth World’ example as different, but in significant ways united, and mutually mobilizable. The strategic implications of this are clearer and much better articulated than what is the ethical dimension of such constellations. For the former, solidarities across divisive spaces – cultural and social differences – have the strategic advantage of ‘spreading’ activism into the globally distributed locales of governance, ensuring that the voices of those struggling against injustices are at least made audible by coactivists in an act of representation. The agency of the disadvantaged, dispossessed or disenfranchised is thus extended, and leverage gained to the degree that mobilization becomes possible swiftly and effectively.

and political life more generally. When interpreted in this way, such a social stratum expresses Hegel’s and Marx’s conception of the ‘rabble’. 431

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns There is, however, a normative dimension to these constellations, which is easily overlooked when the predominant interest is the mapping of stratagems or the analysis of movement efficiencies. This normative dimension can be apprehended, at least in its practical outlines, with regard to ‘alter-casting’, the hypothetical assumption of a textured position and role in a context different, and potentially radically so, from one’s own. This practice of hypothetical perspective-shifting, which is integral to motivating and sustaining solidarist action, is also missed in analytics focused on action as expressions of self-interest, and suggests ‘normative’ rather than ‘strategic’ rationales as central. The role of ‘alter-casting’ in the formation of moral identity has received attention up to now primarily in the context of questions regarding the constitutive factors of individual identity formation. Mead’s seminal work in this regard, discussed and expanded upon by Habermas (1992) in his essay ‘Individuation through Socialization’, raises at least the possibility, however, of making plausible the formation of forms of collective agency based on ‘altercasted’ perspectives, established in the context of movements’ political discourses. It is, of course, important, not to invest practices of alter-casting with too much epistemic weight, insofar as they are integrally involved in facilitating the use of the language of justice in social struggle by actors from diverse backgrounds. The sceptic’s response, that one can never truly ‘get to the bottom’ of what it is like to live someone else’s life, of course stands, as does the anecdotally well-documented fact that in alter-casting, a politics of representation may be at play to a larger or smaller degree, in which the perspectives of ‘others’ are imagined from invested positions by those who do the imagining. To the degree that sensitivity to the power relations underpinning such politics of representation can, however, attend to the practice of alter-casting itself, a perspective is at least opened by which mutual moral requirements and demands can become intelligible.

Towards an Analysis of Movement Politics with ‘Normative Content’ In the previous section, I have attempted to sketch the outlines of a project with which the task of understanding and evaluating the substantively ethical positions and claims of movement politics could be undertaken. This outline was pursued through a – no doubt much too rough and ready – declination through analytical shortcomings which are readily on display among competing approaches. This would lead us towards dealing with questions of social and political change in the images of theories of social and political power, or theories of justice, and through the critique of the legacy of a disciplinary division of labour in the social sciences, which today is shown up not least in the encounter with new empirical challenges to social and political geography. In this context, I have smuggled in a number of further assumptions, which, while not being able to defend them here, I want at least to make explicit. The above exposition has been underpinned by a move away 432

So c ial Mo vement s and Al t er nat ive Gl o bal izat io n from structuralist explanations of movement politics towards action-theoretic ones, a move which I think is necessary for both analyses oriented towards the substantive ethical content of movement struggles, and those concerned with the ‘power’ in and around movements (Tarrow 1998; Touraine 1981). There are a number of reasons why this is generally defensible, but these cannot be traced here (for an excellent exposition of some of them, see Honneth 1995). At the very least, however, we can underline the general plausibility of such a move with regard to the practices of movement struggles themselves, which may be enough to persuade those for whom critical social theory generally depends on the possibility of isolating structural mechanisms which distribute power, position and influence, as it were, behind the ‘backs’ of intentional actors (see Wight 2007; Kurki 2007; Joseph 2008; Selby 2007). The suggestion is, in short, that ‘perspectivity’ matters, or, in other words, that structural conditions and constraints do not look the same way from different social and political positions, so that the ‘scripts’ of agency are not determined by an objective set of relational constellations, but by the perceptions and conceptions actors themselves have of them. For the purpose of the argument in this chapter, this adjustment is sufficient, though it is clear that ardent structuralists will simply riposte that such an analysis remains at a superficial level, and that ‘real’ explanations would involve an account of precisely how such perspectives are produced by structural distributions. I cannot take up the latter argument here, or produce a suitable defence of why I think that ultimately an intersubjectivist action-theoretic approach can be mobilized to show how social structures arise and assume efficacy in the first instance, rendering social structures a second-order phenomenon. Suffice it to merely insist, at this stage, that action-theoretic work is indispensable for understanding movement politics, irrespective of how the structuralist question ultimately stacks up, because without it the question of what motivates actors to engage in struggle vis-à-vis entrenched power cannot be addressed without making extremely problematic assumptions about the ‘mechanical’ production of mass consciousness – not to mention that the question of the ethical content of social and political struggle would be pre-decided in a structuralist framework. According to the latter, norms and ethical claims are merely derivative of positionalities invested in interest and power, and do not have the character of ‘sources’ of substantive claims which ethicists imply they do. The good news for our interest in the ethics of movement politics is that most movement struggle is articulated by the proponents in the language of justice, and hence contains reference to the ‘moral grammar’ of social relations (Honneth 1995). Movement struggle occurs under conditions of asymmetry, when typically politically weak, institutionally marginalized and symbolically disenfranchised actors group together to challenge the conditions of their subalternizations and those actors whom they perceive to be invested in them and actively contributing to their maintenance. This asymmetry means that, when movement actors engage in a politics of resistance, symbolic disobedience or direct institutional challenge by mobilizing under a shared sense of injustice, their challenge is one which, at least implicitly, calls into question the justifications on the basis of which dominant actors maintain their claim to leadership, rule, or even, under 433

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns certain circumstances, domination and superiority. Movement politics is, in this understanding, bound up with the contestation of the normal way of conducting political affairs in the contexts in contention. As a consequence of these dynamic components of movement struggles, it is never really sufficient for dominant social and political actors to simply suppress movement actors through force, coercion or violence. D eployment of methods in the latter image will invariably be tied up with efforts at both publicly justifying the methods, and delegitimizing the movement challengers, their own methods and their causes. This constellation involves a further asymmetry, which is an important component of the ethical dimension of movement struggle: for the most part, movement struggles involve the voicing of injustices, and presentations in various forms of a politics of discontent. The articulation of injustices, both verbally and through other forms of protest, may itself be quite diffuse, impressionistic and lack a coherent vision of justice as such. The effect on the socially and politically dominant forces, however, is that they elicit responses in which determinate visions and ideals of justice are articulated and defended, as representatives of such dominant forces seek to legitimize the current state of affairs or move to incorporate some of the concerns mediated through protests and challenges. In short, the ‘powerful’ are under greater pressure to ‘explain themselves’ than are their challengers. We can see the link here between our interest in the ethics of social movement struggles and the analytical insights presented by Antonio Gramsci (and those who have followed him recently). Recall Gramsci’s depiction of hegemony and his analysis of struggles aimed at replacing one hegemonic formation (bloc) with another. Hegemony was understood to involve the capacity to articulate social and political power with a quasi-naturalized ‘commonsense’ view, making any effective challenge extremely difficult, because not only ‘material’ but also symbolic power (the power of representation, discursive discipline, definitions of rightness and righteousness) was pervasively extended so that it could frame ‘ordinary life’ and hence render resistance precarious. The normative consensus through which ‘common sense’ is legitimized and upheld can, however, be challenged in Gramsci’s view through the ‘war of position’, the formation of political consciousness aside from the framing powers of the institutionalized hegemonic order. It is in this sense, then, that the asymmetry in ‘explanatory pressure’ works in favour of the politics of discontent, forcing normative defences of the status quo of social and political arrangements and power constellations in explicit terms, and hence contributing to making what are otherwise implicitly reproduced rules and commitments open to public scrutiny. The ‘terrain’ in which such a contest takes place, is thus the public sphere (Weber 2005). With this general mapping of the ‘ethical trajectories’ of movement struggle in place, let us move towards taking a closer look at the ‘alter-globalization’ movement, in order to apprehend, at least to some degree, what ethical substance is involved in its challenges.

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The Struggle against Injustices and the ‘Alter-Globalization Movement’ The ‘alter-globalization’ descriptor captures multiple movements differing in scope (narrow or broad), spatial orientation (locally or globally focused), political strategy (engaging formal governance, or externalist and oppositional), and value and social bases (religious influences, identitarian groupings, trade unions, student groups, peasant organizations). A cluster of movements, rather than a movement, ‘alterglobalization’ crystallized initially in the context of a global push to further entrench integrative trends in world politics focused mainly on trade, investment and other economic activities, and the institutional frameworks (treaties, legal frameworks, infrastructure) required for such activities. In the context of the end of the Cold War, the political momentum was seized by politicians and civil society actors aiming to advance the reach of market economic rationales in the countries of the former ‘Eastern bloc’, the so-called ‘developing world’, but also in the social democracies of continental Europe. This push has been described invariably in terms of ‘economic globalization’, in contrast with other forms, such as cultural or technological ones, but these disaggregates are misleading. Although economic considerations and stratagems involving conceptions of economic growth and increased competition played a central role, the process ought to be seen firstly as a political project, with social, cultural and economic implications and consequences. Among the latter was, for instance, the global production of ‘like places’ (Altvater 2002), the translocated emergence of export processing zones, or trade and competition-led pressures to ‘synchronize’ agricultural practices – a result of farmers producing with very different means and under diverse geographical, geological, and climatic conditions crops which are then traded in an integrated market, pitching practices and locales into direct competition. It also involved a push towards the further entrenchment of private property rights in the image of ‘exclusive’ rights (as part of the liberal heritage; see Weber 2007), the widening of their scope (such as intellectual property rights), and a general attack on alternative ownership schemes, as for instance the Mexican ejido system (shared use of communal land), or traditional owner’s user practices. In other parts, collective bargaining arrangements came under attack, unionization became actively discouraged and delegitimized by reference to falling or failing productivity, and increasing numbers of publicly owned services became privatized, often accompanied by a noticeable shift in affordability. Against this backdrop, localized resistance struggles began to form, aimed at countering the effects of these reforms. These resistances in general faced the challenge of voicing political dissent under conditions where ‘official’ channels of representation no longer seemed meaningfully available for the very issues people thought contentious. As the neoliberal reform project gained pace, the landscape of political parties underwent a shift as well, more clearly towards embracing at least central elements of the market society paradigm even in the case of former ‘peoples’ parties’ with broad electoral support on the social democratic left of the political spectrum. With parties of the far left discredited anyhow, democratic politics took 435

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns to the streets, with direct action, protest and symbolic events aimed at disrupting the consensus which underpinned the ‘growth obsession’ (Altvater 2002). While this was still broadly in line with trajectories established in the late 1970s and 1980s with the emergence of ‘New Social Movements’, the defining shift came in the form of the movement clusters’ reorientation in terms of focus and scope of protest and contestation. In the light of national parliaments and governments ‘ringfencing’ economic and social policy-making by circumscribing the scope for ‘political’ interference in trade policy, markets in goods and services, and the entrenchment of the legal standards required for their administration and sanctionability towards multilateral institutions with functionally defined ‘global’ reach, movements scaled up their critical engagement as well. Increasingly, movement activism targeted summits, conventions and the headquarters of ‘global governance’ in an attempt to bring social and political demands to bear on actors perceived no longer accountable directly to democratic electorates. This direct engagement with the emerging regimes of international and global governance, and the movementdriven problematization of their premises and legitimations, is also a significant point of difference between the contemporary alter-globalization movements, and the first ‘global’ movement to challenge the politics of the ‘establishment’, the 1968 student revolts (Cohn-Bendit 2008). Although the latter found common cause in the contestation of what were seen as imperial wars and practices in the ostensibly post-olonial era, their actions remained targeted at respective domestic governments. Not least because of empirical changes in the density, significance and power of transnational governance institutions and regimes, the movements of the alter-globalization cluster have shifted their attention to the processes through which governance and regimes are established. While these trends seem to be clear, this does not yet get us closer to dealing with the ethical content of the struggles engendered in these movement activities. However, with the help of the notion of the ‘contested public sphere’, we can get somewhat closer to this task.

The Ethical Content: Challenging Injustices In keeping with the critical theoretic sentiments already voiced above, the approach to the ethical dimension of alter-globalization struggles must clearly proceed in a somewhat restrained manner. The analytical task of working out what is ethical about activist engagements cannot proceed without some caveats vis-à-vis the more general project of political philosophic inquiry. When looking at movement politics, we are confronted with normative conjectures as a result of both movements’ actions and strategies and their stated agendas and objectives, and not with arguments in normative theory as such. Though this seems blatantly obvious, it is worth keeping it in focus in order to remain attentive to the scope and limitations of claims regarding the ethical content of movement politics. In the idiom of social struggle, in which movements like those belonging to the alter-globalization cluster operate, ethical claims arise in general in negative form, namely as claims against injustices 436

So c ial Mo vement s and Al t er nat ive Gl o bal izat io n and/or practices and patterns of domination or exclusion. It is instructive to focus on the ‘Battle of Seattle’ as an example to illustrate what is at stake here (Gill 2000; Kaldor 2000). On 30 November 1999, activists belonging to several different groups and organizations, from religious groups through labour unions to anarchists, converged in Seattle to protest against and try to disrupt the proceedings of the WTO Ministerial Conference hosted there. The grievances of the groups involved were diverse, but they were united in the shared perception that the trade liberalization agenda for which the WTO stands was implicated in the perpetuation of injustices. In the most general terms, all the participants in the protests would have submitted the claim that the justifications given for WTO-led trade liberalization were disingenuous, and that, contrary to the public rhetoric, there were in fact losers from the global entrenchment of free trade. This claim of an injustice has, at least, two components worth considering. The first is that it involves a challenge to the politics through which the multilateral trading system is promoted. From the perspective of our interest in ethics, we are here confronted with a radical democratic challenge, which obtains the moral charge of an ‘injustice’ (though not exclusively) from deficiencies and democratic deficits perceived in the process of the formation of liberal trade governance. The moral charge here can draw on the principle of quod omnes tangit, the idea that all those affected by a decision should have a say in it (Weber 2002). It constitutes a direct challenge to the claims by advocates of the WTO-led trading system that it is democratically legitimized because it is constituted of and by representative governments. Secondly, it involves a challenge first apprehended in empirical terms, but also entailing a moral point: the substantive claim is against the predominant and hegemonially validated claim that trade liberalization contributes to both growth and greater efficiencies, and thus creates only positive externalities. At the core, a claim like this sustains the ‘split’ between politics and economics (Meiksins Wood 1995). In following the classical political economists, the broadest possible extent of economic freedom enjoyed by rational individuals leads to the accumulation of benefits in terms of needs and wants satisfaction on a much larger scale than is possible under politically directed circumstances. The role of politics is, concomitantly, to supply the required rules (for contract, property rights, and so forth) and the executive power to enforce them (the police, the courts and the administrative support required). For the classical political economists, there was no sense in which this system could produce ‘losers’: because there were limitless things to appropriate, there would be, in principle, both limitless opportunity to engage in productive enterprises for the purpose of creating exchange value and satisfying one’s needs and, where entrepreneurialism was lacking, equally in principle limitless possibilities to enter into exchange relations through the sale of one’s labour power. Classical political economy did not come with a theory of unemployment. Insofar as the public justification of the global trade liberalization agenda relies on arguments like the ones forwarded by the classical political economists, it is vulnerable to criticisms, which challenge the claim that its outcomes are generally desirable. That this is plausible as a case for the protesters can be backed up through a quick look at the discourse through 437

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns which the WTO agenda is presented to the general public: not only can Ricardo’s theory of ‘comparative advantage’ be found to play a central role in the general justification of the trade liberalization agenda, but so too the pervasive language of ‘win-win’ and ‘win-win-win’ scenarios, which is deployed in its support. The first dimension of ethics involved in the political struggle exemplified by the ‘Battle of Seattle’ was, as we have seen, concerned with legitimacy, and broadly articulates with radical democratic demands of some form, though which form this is does not have to be specified by the challengers. The second dimension was to do with a challenge to justifications of the free trade agenda, to do with the allegation that these justifications were false in important respects. Both, however, rely on another feature of movement struggle, one which I want to call the ‘politics of disclosure’. Both types of ethical challenges urge the broader public to adopt a different perspective on the realities in question (in our case, the politics of trade liberalization and its implications), or to recognize at the very least that official and generally accepted representations of the nature and consequences of trade lead social integration are incomplete, distorted or biased. This aspect of ‘disclosure’, the notion that what is actually happening has to be first established, is one component of movement politics that is often overlooked, particularly where the standard tools of political science are deployed, which are often geared towards decisionmaking. The ‘politics of disclosure’, in contrast, is the concern with the opening of a discursive space with the aim of establishing the ‘grounds’ on which decisions can and should be taken in the first place. Where there is general acceptance of the grounds for decision-making (for instance, through agreement on what counts as ‘evidence’), the requirements for a ‘politics of disclosure’ are not actual but, rather, latent (to the degree that all such implicit agreements involve degrees of contingency and asymmetry). The ‘politics of disclosure’, then, is critical in the proper sense of the word of articulating ‘crisis’, in this case a crisis brought on by the fact that what is assumed to be valid in general turns out to be highly particularistic. Movement struggle, viewed in this light, contributes to the denaturalization of orders and imperatives routinely accepted and reproduced, and does so first and foremost discursively, never mind what forms of direct action may be involved in strategies aimed at opening the ‘disclosive’ space. I should add here, in order to avoid any misunderstandings, that the argument I have presented so far does not of course suggest that any stratagems deployed by movements involved in the kinds of struggles described above should be given the ‘ethical stamp of approval’. Nor does it mean that struggles articulated in the 

The idea that normative theory is about, firstly, identifying ethical preferences and, secondly, identifying progressive agents as those who act or advocate on behalf of those preferences has found an increasing number of adherents, particularly in IR constructivist circles. Emblematically, though also perhaps most crudely, such a position is espoused in Price’s (2008) argument about ‘moral limits and possibility’, which displays the tendency of identifying ‘ethical’ with ‘praiseworthy’ agency, without asking the question of what the standards are by which praiseworthiness is meted out. In distinction to such deferments to the ‘sociology of norms’, the understanding of 438

So c ial Mo vement s and Al t er nat ive Gl o bal izat io n idiom of subalterneity, such as the ‘alter-globalization clusters’ are, should be seen as inherently ethical and beyond moral reproach. What I am suggesting is rather that the respective actors and actions in struggle are involved in substantive ethical claims-making insofar as they contribute to the opening of the ‘disclosive space’, and raise challenges to the legitimacy of, or to the justifications for, the prevailing order in the idiom of injustices.

Concluding Thoughts In this chapter, I have tried to outline an analytic for getting to terms with the normative dimension of movement struggles such as the ones grouped together in the ‘alter-globalization’ cluster. Any such undertaking is, as we have seen, tricky. In tracking one possible path for doing something to the question of the ethical substance of movement political engagements, I have, rather liberally, mixed the empirical with the prescriptive in ways which most likely satisfy neither of the two social scientific constituencies, political philosophers and normative theorists on the one hand and empirically oriented social scientists on the other. The argument above was guided by two underlying concerns, both of which require further justification and clarification. The first, which set me off on the path of avoiding to chose a theory of justice first, in order to then run a case-oriented analysis of the ‘alter-globalization’ cluster, was to sidestep some of the constrictions of social and political thought still framed in methodological territorialist terms. The empirical premise I simply took for granted here was that there are patterns of solidarist social and political action, which are genuinely transnational in scope, and that conceptions of a ‘global public sphere’ are more than merely utopian phrases (Brunkhorst 2002). This is, of course, contentious, but there is also a plausible conceptual path towards backing this up. When the Hegelian origins of Gramsci’s conception of civil society are considered for their potential contribution to a critical social theory beyond the boundaries of the state, the analysis of the formation of global governance, such as in the case of the WTO, out of the resources of the law merchant (or private international law; see Cutler 1999) becomes much more plausible. The critical analysis of civil society as the realm of the pursuit of particular interests sustained by formal legal provisions can then be understood to be only one aspect of freedom, and also an aspect which can flip over into creating highly heteronomous social and political relations (Hegel saw in civil society the root of colonialism, for instance). The second underlying concern was my implicit embrace of a normative conception of radical democratic politics, which also sustains my argument about the ethical substance of movement struggle, whether in the mode of the politics normative theory I operate with here revolves centrally around the question of the justification of ethical and moral norms, standards and expectations, while retaining the sociologically informed link to the perspectivities of contending positions in this context. 439

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns of ‘disclosure’, or in the challenges to deficient practices of legitimation and problematic claims to justice. I have indicated that I think relational, intersubjectivist theoretical approaches provide the best chance of actually sustaining a proper defence of this in political philosophic terms, but I have not outlined how such a defence might run. The problem I have dealt with here, the one of movement struggles, presents me with a context in which accounts of justice in terms of liberal political philosophemes from Mill to Rawls and Habermas offer not a great deal of help, owing to weaknesses in dealing with collective moral action and questions of the moral dimensions of social conflict. This is not to suggest a zero-sum game, as if all these contributions could be dismissed, because they somehow fail the ‘social movement’ test. Rather, it points to different dimensions of justice, which have to be thought together, but also seen distinctively. How something like this could work is outlined in Forst (2002), while Honneth (2002) offers good reasons for why crucial aspects of a theory of justice can be explicated with reference to contextual analysis. Much of this is work in progress, even in political philosophy, and my appropriation of elements of it as unproblematic for the purpose of this chapter should therefore be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt. If the arguments above helped in some ways to inch closer to an appreciation of the ethics of movement politics more generally, and the specific challenge of the alter-globalization cluster of movements in particular, it may contribute towards engaging the omissions, shortcuts and abridgements just highlighted. As in movement politics itself, the best possible contribution is towards more and better ‘disclosure’.

References Altvater, E. (2002), ‘The Growth Obsession’, Socialist Register 2002, available at <www.yorku.ca.socreg/>. Brunkhorst, H. (2002), ‘Globalising D emocracy Without a State: Weak Public, Strong Public, Global Constitutionalism’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 31:3, 675–90. Cohn-Bendit, D . (2008), ‘An Elusive Legacy’, The Guardian, 6 May, available at . Cutler, C. (1999), ‘Locating Authority in International Political Economy’, International Studies Quarterly 43:1, 59–81. Fanon, F. (2003), The Wretched of the Earth (London: Penguin). Forst, R. (2001), ‘Towards a Critical Theory of Transnational Justice’, in Pogge, T. (ed.), Global Justice (Oxford: Blackwell). — (2002), Contexts of Justice: Political Philosophy Beyond Liberalism and Communitarianism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).

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So c ial Mo vement s and Al t er nat ive Gl o bal izat io n Gill, S. (2000), ‘Toward a Postmodern Prince? The Battle in Seattle as a Moment in the New Politics of Globalisation’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29:1, 131–40. Habermas, J. (1992), ‘Individuation through Socialization: On George Herbert Mead’s Theory of Subjectivity’, in Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Honneth, A. (1995), The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (Cambridge: Polity Press). — (2002), Suffering from Indeterminacy: A Re-Actualization of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Assen: Van Gorcum). — (2007), Disrespect: The Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press). Ivison, D . (2002), Postcolonial Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Joseph, J. (2008), ‘Hegemony and the Structure-Agency Problem in International Relations: A Scientific Realist Contribution’, Review of International Studies 34:1, 109–28. Kacowicz, A.M. (2007), ‘Globalization, Poverty, and the North–South D ivide’, International Studies Review 9:4, 565–80. Kaldor, M. (2000), ‘“Civilising” Globalisation? The Implications of the “Battle in Seattle”’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29:1, 105–14. Kurki, M. (2007), ‘Critical Realism and Causal Analysis in International Relations’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35:2; 361–78. MacPherson, C.B. (1973), Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Meiksins Wood, E. (1995), Democracy against Capitalism (New York: Cambridge University Press). Price, R. (2008), ‘Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics’, International Organization 62:2, 191–220. Robinson, W.I. (1996), Promoting Polyarchy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Selby, J. (2007), ‘Engaging Foucault: D iscourse, Liberal Governance and the Limits of Foucauldian IR’, International Relations 21:3; 324–45. Shaw, K. (2003), ‘Whose Knowledge for What Politics?’, Review of International Studies 29:SI, 199–221. Shilliam, R. (2008), ‘Indigeneity in New Zealand and the Antinomies of Human Security’, unpublished manuscript. Tarrow, S. (1998), Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). Teivainen, T. (2002), ‘The World Social Forum and Global D emocratization: Learning from Porto Alegre’, Third World Quarterly 23:4, 621–32. Touraine, A. (1981), The Voice and the Eye: An Analysis of Social Movements (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Weber, H., and Berger, M.T (2007), ‘Global Poverty and Inequality’, in Burke, T., D evetak, R., and George, J. (eds), Introduction to International Relations: Australian Perspectives (Canberra: Cambridge University Press). 441

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Weber, M. (2002), ‘Engaging Globalization: Critical Theory and Global Political Change’, Alternatives 27:3, 301–25. — (2005) ‘The Critical Social Theory of the Frankfurt School, and the “Social Turn” in IR’, Review of International Studies 31:1, 195–209. — (2007), ‘On the Critique of the Subject of D evelopment: Beyond Proprietary and Methodological Individualism’, Globalizations 4:4, 460–74. Wight, C. (2007), ‘A Manifesto for Scientific Realism in IR: Assuming the CanOpener Won’t Work!’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 35:2; 379–98.

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26 D ialogue and International Ethics: Religion, Cultural D iversity and Universalism Richard Shapcott

Ever since human beings gathered into social groups they have been confronted by the issue of how to treat outsiders. Most communities have drawn significant moral distinctions between insiders and outsiders, applying different standards accordingly. Nevertheless, many communities and individuals have also offered hospitality, aid and charity to strangers with whom they come into contact. The study of international ethics focuses on how members of ‘bounded’ communities, primarily nation-states, ought to treat ‘outsiders’ and ‘strangers’. Most accounts of international ethics have had to ask how it is possible to treat others as equals in a world characterized by two conditions: (1) the existence of international anarchy, and (2) moral pluralism. International ethics as a separate field of enquiry arises because the division of humanity into separate communities makes the application of any particular community’s ethical code difficult when applied to others. International anarchy is often viewed as a practical challenge because anarchy makes it harder to get things done and reinforces self-interested, rather than altruistic tendencies of individuals and states. The issue of moral pluralism, however, presents both a practical and an ethical challenge. Not only is it harder to get things done when there is no agreement but deciding which ethics should apply in what contexts and whether there are any universal rules are themselves ethical dilemmas. Thus the lack of any single ethical standard of fairness and justice between states makes the task of ethics more difficult because it raises the question of whose principles should apply. Because the international realm is characterized by normative plurality every actor must contemplate the acceptability of actions to themselves and to others. Putting this differently again, in a world characterized by ethical pluralism, by a diversity of ethical traditions and cultures, it cannot be taken for granted that one’s own account of the right thing to do will be acceptable to others. Therefore, in a world that is being globalized, one ethical challenge is to ask: is it possible to define

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns some ethical principles that are not only universal in scope but also in justification, that is, that everyone might be able to agree upon? If so, how might this be done? Long before modern cosmopolitanism emerged the idea of moral universalism was espoused by a variety of religious traditions, most notably Christianity and Islam. Somewhat surprisingly, however, religious accounts of universalism have received very little attention from students of international relations and international ethics. In particular the significance that religious pluralism has for religious universalism has not been appreciated. Religious belief has tended to be either mapped onto the ‘cosmopolitan/communitarian’ divide (see Brown 1992) or into some version of the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis (Huntington 1993). However, this mapping is not as easy as it seems because of the universal ambition and scope of many religious principles and codes. Universalistic religions themselves also have to confront the challenges of ethical pluralism and formulate adequate ethical responses. One of the tasks of this chapter, therefore, is to sketch some of the religious responses to ethical pluralism. One of the most important responses to ethical pluralism, from both religious and secular positions, has been to invoke the notion of a moral dialogue. The idea of a dialogue between different traditions, religions, worldviews and even civilizations has frequently been advanced as a means of mediating and indeed overcoming the profound normative differences that characterize the contemporary world. The idea of an intercivilizational dialogue has been advanced and endorsed by the UN (2001 International Year of D ialogue Amongst Civilizations) as a sort of counter to the more conflictual scenarios suggested by writers like Samuel Huntington and the violent philosophies and actions of religious extremists. One of the aims of this chapter is to examine this idea and its variants and to delineate some of the principal issues that such dialogues are directed towards and how they can help deal with religious pluralism. The chapter begins with a discussion of the cosmopolitan/communitarian framework in order to bring out the issues raised by ethical pluralism in a globalizing context. It then moves to discussing pluralism from the point of view of universalist religions such as Christianity and Islam and the way in which both religious and secular thinkers have conceived of dialogue. The chapter concludes with some reflections on this debate for political ethics in a plural world.

Moral Knowledge and Cultural Diversity As noted, the cosmopolitan/communitarian framework is one of the basic categorizations used to think about international ethics. This framework is often wrongly characterized as concerned with moral boundaries when the heart of the dispute is actually about moral knowledge. Underlying the distinction between those who favour universal moral duties and those who argue for culturally restricted duties are two different answers to the problem of moral knowledge. The fundamental question here is: is it possible to have a genuine, objective 444

Rel igio n, Cul t ur al Diver sit y and Univer sal ism moral code? Or, putting it another way, how do we choose between different competing ethical approaches? The framework cuts across distinctions between deontological, consequentialist and other strategies of ethical decision-making. Liberal cosmopolitans often imply the claim that they can identify a rational ethics, which is in one sense transcendent, objective or at least impartial in relation to different ethical principles. Such a morality ought therefore to be accessible to any rational person and is therefore universal. In contrast, common to most anticosmopolitan positions is what Chris Brown (1992) has identified as a communitarian understanding of the origins and the nature of morality and ethics, which in turn leads to a rejection of cosmopolitanism. Communitarians see ethics as the product of different traditions of thought, and therefore as contingent on the cultural norms out of which they arise. D ifferent cultures and worldviews have different moralities. In some cases this leads to a form of ethical relativism; ethics are simply what your culture says they are, therefore it is impossible to state what ‘morality’ actually is or to define what is right to do once and for all. In other words, the cosmopolitan/anticosmopolitan distinction concerns the implications of certain claims about the nature of moral knowledge for moral communities. From this framework we can read a great deal of international ethics as concerned with or responding to the issue of ethical, moral and cultural pluralism. In particular the framework reveals that ethical pluralism is a foundational problem for international ethics which has extended beyond the debate about ethics into IR more generally. The significance of ethical and cultural pluralism for moral and political universalism can be made clear from a brief consideration of realism. In classical realist accounts of ethics and foreign policy, such as provided by Hans Morgenthau (1985), George Kennan (1986) and in E.H. Carr (1939), the pluralism of moral frameworks in the international realm and the absence of an impartial arbiter between them form part of the basic realities that statespersons have to contend with in their foreign policy formulations. Such diversity places a limit on the reformist or moralizing ambitions of liberals and other idealists. This is both a practical and moral limit to universalism because it means that any attempt to propound a universal moral account will meet with inevitable opposition and disagreement from those who do not share this account. Thus most realists are sceptical, for instance, about the Bush administration’s aims of spreading democracy in the Middle East and the administration’s claim that ‘American values are universal values’ (see Mearsheimer and Walt 2003). Realists believe that such statements are usually either a cynical mask or a self-interested delusion. Realists claim that in reality there are no such universal values and, even if there were, anarchy would prevent states from acting in accordance with them. At the core of the realist tradition lies a set of claims that cosmopolitanism is both impossible (impractical) and undesirable. According to realists, cosmopolitan universalism requires a universal state of nature that is impossible and undesirable because it would be a source of violence, domination and tyranny. Furthermore, under conditions of anarchy and moral pluralism any attempt to act within a cosmopolitan ethical framework or realize universal values would be an unjustified imposition of one account of ‘the good society’ over others. 445

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Normative pluralism thus reinforces and adds to the centrifugal forces consequent upon the condition of international anarchy, which direct moral priority inwards to the nation-state. In this way realism shares certain communitarian assumptions because it acknowledges the cultural origins of different ethical codes and the obstacle this provides to universalism. Realism has, in general, favoured a plurality of communities rather than the creation of a world empire. While it is sometimes necessary to override other states’ interests, indeed even to the point of total destruction, realists argue that it is generally a good thing that no state is able to impose its own account of universality all the time. As Murray (1996, 101) notes for Morgenthau, ‘ultimately toleration and the acknowledgment of the right of the other to pursue an alternative conception of the good are asserted as fundamental moral necessities’. While never fully theorized in realist thought, this concern for diversity is almost always present. Thus realism takes the existence of moral, cultural and political diversity as the basic condition of international politics and marries this to a conception of human nature that sees humans as incapable of overcoming this diversity or resolving differences without unacceptable levels of violence. While realism’s conclusions stem from its basic assumptions they are not the necessary conclusions to be drawn from this starting point. In particular, if we divorce the conception of moral pluralism from the conception of human nature we may come to different conclusions. We do not have to accept that pluralism leads necessarily to violent conflict and, more importantly, we do not have to accept that pluralism presents a fundamental limit to ethical conduct. Rather, the basic conclusion to be drawn from the existence of ethical pluralism is that it complicates the moral equation and the judgments we make but it does not release us from ethics altogether.

Universalism and Religious Pluralism It is of more than passing significance that the communitarian claim normally refers to either the nation or the state as the relevant moral community and alternative to the cosmopolis. By focusing on the state or nation as the relevant community, communitarians ignore the extent to which many communities are transnational because of their religious elements. There is good reason for thinking that for many people it is the religious community that provides their most important community and the source of their moral codes and practices. What this means for the communitarian argument is that there is no necessary correlation between community and state or nation. The recognition that people draw their moral resources from a variety of ‘communities’ leads to another important issue not often explored by communitarians and this is the actual substantive content of community belief. In the context of religious communities it is of immense significance that many of them are universalistic in their scope and ambition. At least until the European Enlightenment moral universalism 446

Rel igio n, Cul t ur al Diver sit y and Univer sal ism has been the province of religious thought. Many, and certainly the most well-known and widespread, religions are certainly transboundary if not universalistic in their claims, appeals and geographic extent. Thus to be situated in the Christian church is always to be situated in a community which makes a universalist moral claim, as does Islam. Judaism, however, has a less universalist claim as it is more closely tied to a specific ‘ethnic’ community. Buddhism, likewise, does not restrict its message to any particular historical community and is universalist, but not evangelical in its message. Communitarians have tended to pay too little attention to this dimension of community, that is, to the content of particular communities. As a result they provide little guidance on how normatively to reconcile these universalistic communities with their particularist origins. Specifically it is not clear whether it should be considered acceptable to contextualize religious universalism or not. The claim to have moral authority over the temporal realm seems to follow automatically from the claim to have access to a transcendental spiritual reality. Such claims are rarely stated in relativistic terms, at least in the major world religions, as distinct from local faiths which are deeply embedded in particular places and geographies. However, to counter this claim with the communitarian argument that all such knowledge is contextual or historical is immediately to relativize these beliefs and, if you like, to bring in from outside another form of liberalism. If we accept the observation that much religious thought is a form of universalist communitarianism then it directs our ethical questions towards more substantive questions about what different ethical codes preach and the content of competing universalisms. The problem of ethical pluralism takes on a number of different, more complex facets than simply universalism versus particularism. One question that arises is how competing universalisms and other substantive moral codes relate to each other. Interestingly enough, this is a question that has been of central interest to all the great faiths and most religious thinkers, even if it has not always been the most prominent. Thus when addressing the question of ethical pluralism it is important to understand how this issue itself has been dealt with by both religious and secular or liberal thinkers. Before proceeding it is useful also to identity why the liberalism commended by liberal cosmopolitans is problematic for religious thinkers. Secularism and Enlightenment thought, and liberalism in particular, has sought to identify the non-religious grounds of moral universalism. This goal arguably was perhaps most successfully achieved by Immanuel Kant (see Kant 1996). While Kant did not reject religion he did argue that reason provided the basis for moral universalism. Thus while many today seek to pit religion against reason we can see that in many cases they seek the same thing, to identify or formulate a universal moral realm. The most important difference between them is over the basis or source of this universalism. Faith-based moral codes appeal to divine sources from the non-temporal realm as the ultimate authority for their moral vision while the secular Enlightenment appeals to reason alone as providing the form and content of moral universalism. In their least tolerant and most caricatured formulations faith and reason are opposed to each other and are mutually exclusive. This view is most starkly 447

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns displayed in recent debates about the compatibility of liberal democracy and Islam as well as the influence of evangelical Christianity upon the Republican Party in the US. Some interpretations of secularism see such practices as a purely private matter. This conception, as found in the French republic, sees politics as a religion-free zone – religion is a private matter for the spiritual realm and not to be displayed in public spaces. In contrast the liberal view sees no necessary conflict between such practices as long as their expression is neither imposed upon anyone nor prevents others from expressing their own religious beliefs. However, the liberal solution also relies upon suspending substantive religious claims and a willingness to make a distinction between the public and private realms that many religious faiths may not be able to accept. In order to secure freedom for all, fundamental religious views about the nature of reality must be put aside in favour of practical questions of how to live together according to rules to which everyone can adhere. Thus the religious are asked to bracket their beliefs or at least restrain and restrict their application in the name of practical consensus. In Islam, for instance, Koranic doctrine and the teachings of Mohammed address the relationship between inner spirituality and daily practice and the conduct of a good life, and emphasizes that these cannot always be divorced. Thus Islam is both a spiritual and a moral code, concerned with matters otherworldly and temporal. For many, though not all, Muslims the public/private divide is artificial and a restriction upon their religious practices. What this means is that it is not clear at all that liberalism represents a solution for those who are not liberals in this sense. In this context it useful to turn to some of the religious answers to the ethics of pluralism.

Clash of Universalisms and Dialogue of Civilizations It would be hard to contest that the revival of Islamic thought and political activism in the latter part of the twentieth century, culminating in the terrorists attacks on the US on 11 September 2001, have led to the displacement of the cosmopolitan/ communitarian distinction with the idea of a clash of civilizations. In the thesis put forward by Samuel Huntington (1993) the fundamental distinction in the world is cultural but, more importantly, civilizational. In light of Huntington’s writings many people have sought to focus on a perceived fundamental clash between Islam and the West (ignoring of course the common origins of both). The central idea of the clash of civilizations is not unlike some of the communitarian arguments in that it relies upon the assumption of irredeemable incommensurability between cultures. The difference here is that the cultures or communities in question are often both universalistic and/or expansionary. More specifically the idea of a clash focuses on the notion that not only do Islam and the West hold to different fundamental principles but they are also in competition over these principles and over which of them has universal validity. The implication is that this makes pure coexistence or tolerance not an option because each represents a threat to each other that has to be countered if not neutralized. 448

Rel igio n, Cul t ur al Diver sit y and Univer sal ism However, concurrently with the ‘clash’ thesis there has been no shortage of calls from those seeking and espousing a dialogue of religions and civilizations. Indeed, ironically 2001 was declared by the UN the year of ‘dialogue of civilizations’, following a suggestion from Mohammed Khatami, then President of Iran. T his sort of call has been echoed or mirrored throughout both the Muslim and the Western world (see Petito 2007; Esposito and Voll 2000) by those who argue that such a dialogue is required for spiritual reasons in order to counter, amongst other things, the onset of materialism and spiritual nihilism associated with the modern age. Khatami’s call was, however, preceded by at least a century by the idea of a dialogue of religions, of which in one sense his call was a culmination. The idea of a dialogue of civilizations was preceded by the idea of a dialogue of religions and, more specifically, by the attempt to find common ground amongst the world religions. This was first attempted in the Parliament of the World’s Religions held in Chicago in 1893 (with further conventions in 1993, 1999, 2004 and 2009). Among other things and despite a great deal of heated disagreement the participants in the second (1993) Parliament were able to agree upon and endorse the text of a core common standard of principles which its primary author, the noted German theologian Hans Küng, envisioned as the basis for a global ethic. This ethic was understood as reflecting an already existing consensus among the world religions ‘concerning binding values, irrevocable standards and fundamental moral attitudes’ (Küng and Schmidt 1998, 9). The global ethic endorsed a morally cosmopolitan position based upon ‘the full realization of the intrinsic dignity of the human person, the inalienable freedom and equality in principle of all humans, and the necessary solidarity and interdependence of all humans with each other’ (ibid., 11). The global ethic drafted by Küng boils down to two basic propositions and four directives. The two propositions are: (1) every human must be treated humanely, and (2) the Golden Rule, ‘What you do not wish to be done to yourself do not do unto others’. The four directives are common commitments to ‘a culture of nonviolence and respect for life’, ‘a culture of solidarity and a just economic order’, ‘a culture of tolerance and a life of truthfulness’, and ‘a culture of equal rights and partnership between men and women’ (ibid., 93). The draft global ethic was also seen by Küng as a response to global crisis and its purpose was to provide a ‘moral foundation for a better individual and global order’ (1990, 9). Motivating Küng’s global ethic was also a threefold argument about the need for and purposes of such an ethic: ‘There can be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. There can be no peace among the religions without dialogue between the religions. There can be no dialogue between the religions without research into theological foundations’ (ibid., 105) There are at least two things to be noted about this ethic for our purposes. The first is that it claims to identify an already existing area of agreement (or convergence) common to all participants. This agreement 

The fact that this was proposed by the head of the Islamic Republic of Iran and that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were also originated in an Islamic source remind us, of course, of the plurality of opinion regarding the ‘the West’ that exists within Islamic civilizations. 449

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns is fundamentally a rejection of intolerance, religious violence and bigotry. It is an explicit refutation of the ‘religion equals war’ argument held by many. However, a possible dilemma arises at this point. If Küng has identified a minimal global ethic, and one which rejects violent intolerance and treats everyone as bearers of dignity, then it must be able to provide some account of the violations of this ethic from within the different traditions. That is, where do those practitioners who see the world only in terms of the faithful and the godless fit? If they are clearly not part of this consensus how are they to be understood and related to? Küng’s answer is simply that such viewpoints are lacking a capacity for self-criticism and a true awareness of divisions within their own communities. Secondly, as a draft declaration it was intended only as the beginning of an ongoing religious dialogue. Its function as such was to identify relatively noncontroversial common values as a precursor to more thoroughgoing and wideranging dialogue. The purpose of this dialogue was to expand the basic consensus if possible but also to function as a means of conflict resolution through better mutual understanding. Küng also implies that such dialogue is both a form of moral responsibility; that is, that it is not merely a practical necessity, and also a form of religious practice. To engage in dialogue is to be a better Christian/Jew/Hindu/Muslim because its makes one more self-aware and reflective of mistakes. No religion is perfect or ‘without sin’. The judgment of others, he claims, is only possible when one has or is already engaged in self-criticism. Khatami’s call can be seen as an attempt to fulfil this responsibility as well as addressing a practical necessity. In other words it is morally incumbent upon members of different faiths to seek to understand each other. Such a sense of moral responsibility clearly goes against the grain of extremist intolerance which sees only a responsibility to triumph. Thus Küng’s and Khatami’s call, as a moral call, raises the question of the theological foundations of such a responsibility. The recognition of a need to achieve some common ground and to bring the world’s religions into dialogue with each other has a number of sources, some contextual and practical, and some doctrinal and spiritual. The next section examines some of the theological bases of religious tolerance which give rise to different practices and beliefs regarding pluralism of faith.

Theological and Philosophical Bases of Religious Tolerance and Intolerance The existence of different faiths with different creeds and doctrines provides a fundamental challenge for any doctrine that seeks to make its own creed universal, that claims a universal message, such as Islam and Christianity. The existence of other beliefs stands as a permanent challenge to any claim to have identified the

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Rel igio n, Cul t ur al Diver sit y and Univer sal ism one true faith or way. Once that claim has been made choices have to be made concerning how to deal with the challenge of other religions. The claim to hold the truth inevitably reveals others as in need of that truth, therefore the next step is to spread that truth. Universalists have, of course, adopted many different strategies – from peaceful preaching to indoctrination, war and forced assimilation – to convert people from their ‘false’ belief to the ‘one true’ faith. The problem is that many people resist the new truth and continue in their ‘ignorance’ or idolatry. Faced with these recalcitrants what options remain? In Christian doctrine, at least since Paul, the answers to these questions appear to have been derived from the doctrine of ‘no salvation outside the church’. This has meant that those who refuse the church’s mission and those who have not heard it are unable to be saved. This position was modified later by the doctrine that if people practised their own religions in good faith but had not been exposed to Christianity, they were likely to be saved by God’s grace because they belonged to the church ‘with implicit desire’ (see Eck 2005, 26). ‘No salvation outside the church’ condemns non-Christians to everlasting damnation. At worst this doctrine has allowed European Christians to treat non-believers with disdain and brutality presumably because their souls are ‘already lost to Satan’. Likewise within Islam the doctrine of apostasy and of armed jihad are open to the interpretation that they allow warfare and inhumanity to those who do not accept Islam. These doctrines bring to the foreground the idea that ultimately there can be no concordance between faiths. However, many religions, including both Islam and Christianity, have contained alternative non-violent and more tolerant doctrines. Both Christianity and Islam, for instance, have traditions of spirituality which emphasize a non-dogmatic relationship to non-believers or outsiders. These range from coexistence or noninterfering tolerance to an assimilatory approach, to the idea of dialogue. D iana Eck identifies three common responses: the exclusivist, the inclusivist and the pluralist. The exclusivist response: our own community, our tradition, our understanding of reality, our encounter with God, is the one and only truth excluding all others … [T]he inclusivist … there are indeed many communities … and truth, but our own way of seeing things is the culmination of the others, superior to the other or at least wide enough to include the other under our universal canopy and in our own terms … [T]he pluralist truth is not the exclusive or inclusive possession of any one tradition or community … 

The modern era has brought this question to its most intense pitch than since, perhaps, the Crusades. What differs is that now there are even more religions in the mix, such as Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism (though Confucianism is a philosophy rather than a religion), and even New Ageism and animism or paganism. Pluralism is less of a problem for faiths like Buddhism and Hinduism because they are not so focused on conversion and evangelism, even if they do have a universalist (non-exclusionary) message. The same can be said for paganism and the spirituality of many ‘indigenous’ peoples. 451

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns The diversity of communities … visions of God, is not an obstacle for us to overcome but an opportunity for our energetic engagement and dialogue with one another … it means opening up our commitments to the give and take of mutual discovery, understanding and indeed transformation (2005, 23). In Eck’s account inclusivism is a definite advance over exclusivism but it is also limited and can too easily settle for mere coexistence. Pluralism provides the advantage because it not only treats the other’s religion with respect but it provides a more honest, or at least humble, relationship with one’s own faith, and therefore with God. There is no presumption to know God’s will and therefore to be able to stand in final judgement of others. However, for some even pluralism has it problems. For Muhammad Legenhausen it is problematic from an Islamic perspective because it assumes that no one religion has more insight than any other. For the authentic practitioner who has sincere belief in his or her own faith this is a problem. Thus pluralism sits outside the actual experience of religious practice if it reduces all religious insight to variation on the same idea. Sitting somewhere between Eck’s inclusivism and pluralism is what Legenhausen calls ‘degree pluralism’. Islam is a degree pluralist religion because from its perspective: Those who choose a religion other than Islam are making a mistake, either sinfully or excusably. Since there is no way for us to tell whether or not the mistake is excusable, where good relations with non-Muslims are possible without condoning injustice, the presumption of an honest mistake is morally incumbent upon us (2005, 70). Thus Islam sees all sincere belief as having something to contribute, but not equally so: ‘a plurality of religious traditions contain divine light and truth … followers of other traditions may find the way to salvation through their own faiths by the grace of God’ (Legenhausen 2005, 70). Legenhausen’s point is important because it does not flinch from looking at the substance of religious belief and what it may mean in the context of pluralism. For Islam, he argues, there are certain things that are essential; these include the basic belief that Muhammad was the last prophet and that the Koran is the last word of God as relayed to him. This necessarily requires the belief that other views are inferior or incomplete and Islam is the culmination of these beliefs. What this objection brings to the fore is the relationship between an openness towards others, a fundamental spiritual humility in relation to the divine, and a commitment to the truth of one’s own faith. It raises the question of whether accommodation to other faiths is incompatible with a commitment to one’s own truth and if so how this should be undertaken. Another way of thinking about the problem that religious pluralism poses is to reflect on the question succinctly put by D iana Eck: ‘Is our God listening to the prayers of people of other faiths?’ (2005, 21). How you answer this question will decide whether you treat other religions with respect and what type of respect you might treat them with. If you think that your God is not listening to others, then 452

Rel igio n, Cul t ur al Diver sit y and Univer sal ism you must question what sort of God you worship and what that worship entails. At the very least you have to decide whether it is your job or God’s job to judge the other’s belief. If you suspect that your God might be listening to people of other faiths then it ought to predispose you to treating those faiths as possible bearers of truth, or at least as part of that God’s creation. Eck’s exclusivist, inclusivist and pluralist respond with three different answers: ‘Our’ God is not listening to those of other faiths. Our God is indeed listening, but it is our God as we understand God who does the listening … [O]ur God is listening, but … that God, is not ‘ours’, God is our way of speaking of a reality that cannot be encompassed by any one religious tradition, including our own (ibid., 23). Legerhausen’s degree pluralist answer to Eck’s question would be to say that we must admit to ‘our ignorance of how God may guide the sincere, and what beliefs are the results of sincere quest for truth’ (Legerhausen 2005, 71). In other words, we must admit that God may listen to and answer the prayers of others but we cannot know how. Both the inclusivist and the pluralist answers lead to the possibility of an open dialogue because dialogue becomes the means to a better understanding of God, and of reality through exposure to other forms of God’s manifestation. However, while in both cases dialogue is possible and even desirable, they provide different grounds and different terms for that dialogue. At the same time Legenhausen’s qualification of pluralism is suggestive because it does not shut down the goal of genuine, open and pluralistic dialogue while stipulating certain topics as unquestionable. It also suggests that participants in dialogue do not have to share the same understanding of what a dialogue is for, or what is at stake, so long as they are able to treat each other’s views and person with respect. What this discussion allows us to see is that there is no necessary correlation between religious faith and exclusivity or violence to the other. Within all religious traditions there are voices and resources for interpretation which go beyond fundamentalism and exclusion. In religious responses to normative diversity the recognition of the ultimate limits of human understanding of the divine gives rise to a humility which engenders both tolerance and openness to other accounts. Thus from these reflections on the nature of religious pluralism we can detect the origins of the calls for intercivilizational and interreligious dialogue. What is dialogue for? Pluralism and exclusivism in dialogue: From an ethical perspective, the paradigm of Dialogue among Civilizations requires that we give up the will-to-power and instead appeal to will-toempathy and compassion. Without the will-to-empathy, compassion and understanding, there would be no hope for the prevalence of order in our world. We ought gallantly to combat this dearth of compassion and empathy in our world. The ultimate goal of Dialogue among Civilizations is not dialogue in and of itself, but the attainment of empathy and compassion (Khatami, quoted in Petito 2007, 110). 453

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Once we have agreed that dialogue is possible and desirable we need to think further about what that dialogue should be about and what exactly its purposes might be, and that means deciding what should be left in and what should be left out and upon what basis it should be conducted. The idea of dialogue as an ethical or moral relationship has been at the centre of a number of streams in contemporary Western philosophy, perhaps most notably in the work of Jürgen Habermas (1990) but also others such as Mikhail Bakhtin and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1975). The writings of these thinkers largely parallel those examined above. In particular, in all of these dialogue is not merely a relationship of exchange but is rather an ethical mode of engagement. Thus this section identifies some of the common themes and divergent elements in two non-religious accounts of dialogue that are relevant to the questions of international ethics and which also shed light on the more subtle issues at stake in the various notions of dialogue or, rather, which help to bring more specifically the meaning of ethical dialogue in relation to moral pluralism.

Cosmopolitan Dialogue The ideal of dialogue pursued by religious thinkers is subtly different but also resonant with cosmopolitan thinkers such as Habermas and Fred D allmayr (1992). Likewise, a number of writers in international relations, such as Andrew Linklater (1998), have advanced the idea of dialogue as a means for mediating different ethical traditions and moral pluralism; that is, for reconciling the goal of universalism with the recognition of difference and pluralism. The distinction between inclusivism, or some sort of assimilationism, and pluralism is echoed in these accounts of dialogue. They negotiate the difficult terrain of how to develop a form of moral universalism through inclusion in the dialogue without that involving assimilation or some form of hierarchy. While the starting points of these accounts are different they come to very similar conclusions about the role and mode of dialogue in dealing with ethical pluralism. For Habermas and Linklater dialogue is the only means for achieving legitimacy of moral rules and for realizing the categorical imperative. In other words the imperative to treat others as ‘ends in themselves’ requires a universal dialogue to arrive at meaningful and legitimate rules of behaviour on a global and international scale. In this context Habermas (1990) outlines the mode of conversation that is appropriate to a dialogue that is unconstrained or undistorted. This mode of dialogue has several prerequisites. The first is that no position can be excluded in advance. Another is that agents must be willing to enter into dialogue and to strive towards agreement. Conversation is to be understood neither as a competition nor, in Linklater’s words, a ‘trial of strength between adversaries bent on converting others to their cause’ (1997, 86). Rather in a pluralist vein an authentic dialogue should be motivated and guided by a willingness to be persuaded by the ‘unforced force of the better argument’, which means that ‘agents suspend their own truth claims, respect the claims of others and anticipate that their initial points of 454

Rel igio n, Cul t ur al Diver sit y and Univer sal ism departure will be modified in the course of dialogue’ (ibid.). Participants need to be able to reflect upon their own starting points and positions and, in principle, come to see how they reflect preferences which may not be shared by others. Above all a commitment to dialogue means ‘there is no certainty about who will learn from whom’ (ibid.). Thus, like Küng, Habermas’s model requires a capacity for selfcriticism and a willingness to acknowledge one’s own limitations of knowledge. While Habermas’s model has a great deal in common with the idea of a religious dialogue in which all treat each other’s position as a potential contribution, there is a significant difference that makes it potentially unpalatable to those who do not work in a secular framework. For Habermas the dialogue he envisions is a practical dialogue not about fundamental reality but about practices and how actions affect each other. The dialogue concerns practical matters not metaphysical truths. Thus fundamental religious views about the nature of reality must be put aside so that practical questions of how to live together according to rules that everyone can adhere to can be formulated. The religious effectively are asked to bracket their beliefs or at least restrain and restrict their application in the name of practical consensus. In particular it might appear from this perspective that it asks religious participants to pretend they do not believe what they believe and to be willing to put aside their beliefs if they do not stand up to or command the consent of others. This is clearly a problem and also a misunderstanding by Habermas of the nature of religious claims and the relationship between doctrine and practice in many religions. For the religious pluralist, and especially the degree pluralist, the suspension of truth claims is problematic. As we have seen, one of the defining features of religious faith is precisely the claim to have truthful insight, thus for instance the claim to truth embodied in Islam cannot be suspended. In one sense, from a religious point of view believers are being called to account to other human beings for the impacts of their beliefs upon others. But while, of course, respect for other human beings (and indeed care and compassion) are core, as identified by Küng, the question of accountability is ultimately in many accounts a question for God and God alone. That is to say, why should a religious adherent abandon the divinely inspired practice because it does not receive another’s consent? In a similar vein a religious person might well ask why they should suspend their fundamental claim to truth when that is in fact what defines them and their positions and judgement from the beginning. Thus the Habermasian account for many simply repeats the assimilatory tendencies of ‘inclusivist’ accounts. In Habermasian dialogue the participants engage on terms that require them to assimilate to a liberal, secular vision. The ethics of dialogue advanced by religious thinkers is much closer to the thinking of Hans-Georg Gadamer. His philosophical hermeneutics suggests that understanding is an act of communication that is essentially dialogical or conversational in nature. Beginning from their own starting point the participants enquire as to the meaning of each other’s statements. In this model of conversation self and other are seen as partners in discussion ‘concerning an object or subject [die sache Selbst] which is placed before them and which they seek to understand’ (1975, 367). Gadamer argues that conversation is a process of question and answer 455

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns between agents concerned to understand a subject matter and who enter the conversation with the expectation of encountering truth. For Habermas dialogue is a means of securing moral legitimacy and arriving at an account of the right that is universal. Instead, for Gadamer dialogue ultimately is motivated by the concern for understanding which may or may not lead to substantive agreement. Genuine understanding involves coming to see the truth of what the other has to say in relation to the subject matter. Thus Khatami’s call for a dialogue of civilizations is very Gadamerian, rather than Habermasian in its tone: Meta-historical discussion of such eternal human questions as the ultimate meaning of life and death, or goodness and evil ought to substantiate and enlighten any dialogue in political and social issues. Without a discussion of fundamentals, and by simply confining attention to superficial issues, dialogue would not get us far from where we currently stand. When superficial issues masquerading as ‘real’, ‘urgent’ and ‘essential’ prevail, and where no agreement or at least mutual understanding concerning what is truly fundamental is obtained among parties to dialogue, in all likelihood misunderstanding and confusion would proliferate instead of empathy and compassion (Khatamai in Petito 2007, 110). A conversation is therefore not merely an exchange of information or the acquisition of knowledge for strategic or instrumental purposes, as in the case of (say) medical diagnosis. Neither is it about gaining knowledge of the other’s mind or psychology, nor is it motivated only by a Habermasian desire for legitimacy and deontological surety. Instead, it is for Gadamer ‘a process of coming to an understanding’ (1975, 387). Understanding engenders change in the traditions and the participants as they come to see things from a new perspective through their encounter with the other. By creating something new the hermeneutic conversation, insofar as it achieves understanding, brings about a transformation of our own horizon, that is to say we are changed by the conversation. The act of understanding, Gadamer argues, occurs when the different linguistic and historical horizons of the participants – be it individuals, or a reader and a text – meet in a fusion: ‘In the process of understanding there takes place a real fusing of horizons, which means that as the … horizon is projected, it is simultaneously removed’ (ibid., 273). Understanding thus involves a fusion in the sense that it does not involve either the annihilation or assimilation of existing positions but rather their coming to inhabit a shared perspective. This shared meaning is, in an important sense, something new that exceeds and transforms the previous horizons without destroying them. It is in this sense that understanding ‘always involves the attainment of a higher universality that overcomes, not only our particularity, but also that of the other’ (ibid., 271). The fusion, therefore, occurs when horizons remain and yet simultaneously come to share a new meaning, or simultaneously come to occupy the same territory or vantage point. Understanding is referred to as a fusion because this word captures the idea that the individual horizons come to occupy the same place, while not necessarily losing their particular perspective. 456

Rel igio n, Cul t ur al Diver sit y and Univer sal ism The advantage of the Gadamerian model for theologians and religious thinkers is that it allows for a search for, and claim to truth on behalf of the participants, which enables them to remain ‘steadfast’ (Küng 1990) in their own beliefs, or horizons, while still being open to the claims of others. The common thread that runs between Küng’s, Habermas’s and Gadamer’s conception of dialogue is that dialogue is the opposite to dogmatism because it requires a willingness, at some level, to admit fallibility and imperfection; that is, to learn from others. What they also share is a refusal to go down the path of relativism or subjectivism in which anything goes or all beliefs are equal. Instead, dialogue becomes the means for both engagement and evaluation of each other’s claims to truth. D ialogue then becomes not only a means of bridging religious pluralism but also the religious/secular divide.

Conclusion The chapter started with a discussion of the meaning of normative pluralism for international ethics. It was argued that, for many, normative pluralism rendered ethics inoperable or severely limited in the international realm. However, while normative pluralism certainly makes the creating and enforcing of laws more difficult, and also makes it harder to be confident of the morality of one’s decisions though it does not render it impossible. The presence of differences is not considered to relieve us of our ethical obligations, or the idea that we should treat people ethically; it only makes these obligations and ideas more complex and subject to reflection and modification. The idea of global dialogue is one that has been advanced as one means of thinking about ethics in this situation. Underlying the accounts of interreligious dialogue and the dialogue of understanding is the belief that dialogue is not only a practical requirement but a moral responsibility when engaging with those of a different faith or culture. The point is that, for those of us who are concerned about acting ethically, the existence of other people with different ethical frameworks does not mean that we should automatically throw up our hands and think we are no longer required to treat them well. It only means that to treat someone well is made more difficult. The same conceptual framework or idea applies to states. If we believe in human rights and incorporate them into our foreign policy goals then the fact that others may not share the same understandings of human rights and the same foreign policy goals does not relieve us of the obligation to pursue human rights as our own ethical goals, even though it may make it more difficult and requires a more sensitive handling of the issues (see Brown 2002). More specifically, the existence of ethical pluralism in all its varieties, including religious, means we cannot assume that everybody else will act according to the same ethical framework, either in relationship to each other or to us. In other words, we cannot assume a universal ethical and moral framework. Therefore, we cannot demand reciprocity without first understanding other ethical worldviews and reasons for certain actions. To 457

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns bring about this understanding, we are obligated to engage in some sort of dialogue that will allow us to understand the other group or individual and will also allow them to understand us. Any answer to the question of how we ought to treat others has to ask how they (the others) themselves would like to be treated. In other words, practitioners must consult not only their own normative values but the values of those they are concerned to act towards. It is this insight that the Biblical injunctions to love thy neighbour as thyself and to treat others as you would have them treat you are addressed, as is Kant’s categorical imperative and Küng’s Golden Rule. It is only through this dialogue that we may be able to understand differences and reach some sort of agreement or understanding about how to interact with and treat each other ethically in a morally pluralist world.

References Benhabib, S. (1995), ‘Cultural Complexity, Moral Interdependence and the Global D ialogical Community’, in Nussbaum, M., and Glover, J. (eds), Women, Culture and Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Boase, R. (ed.) (2005), Islam and Global Dialogue: Religious Pluralism and the Pursuit of Peace (Aldershot: Ashgate). Brown, C. (1992), International Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (New York: Columbia University Press). Brown, M.A. (2002), Human Rights and the Borders of Suffering: The Promotion of Human Rights in International Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press). Carr, E.H. (1939), The Twenty Years Crisis 1919–1939 (London: Macmillan). D allmayr, F. (1992), Dialogue among Civilizations: Some Exemplary Voices (New York: Palgrave). Eck, D . (2005), ‘Is our God Listening? Exclusivism, Inclusivism, and Pluralism’, in Boase (ed). Esposito, J.L., and Voll, J.O. (2000), ‘Islam and the West: Muslim Voices of D ialogue’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29:3, 613–39. Gadamer, H.G. (1975), Truth and Method (New York: Continuum). Habermas, J. (1990), Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge: Polity). Huntington, S.P. (1993), ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs 72:3, 22–49. Kant, I. (1996), ‘Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason’, in Wood, A.W., and D i Giovanni, G. (eds), Religion and Rational Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Kennan, G. (1986), ‘Morality and Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs 64:2, 205–18. Küng, H. (1990), Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic (London: SCM Press). Küng, H., and Schmidt, H. (eds) (1998), A Global Ethic and Global Responsibilities: Two Declarations (London: SCM Press).

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Rel igio n, Cul t ur al Diver sit y and Univer sal ism Legenhausen, M. (2005), ‘A Muslim’s Non-Reductive Religious Pluralism’, in Boase (ed.). Linklater, A. (1996), ‘Citizenship and Sovereignty in the Post-Westphalian State’, European Journal of International Relations 2:1, 77–103. — (1997), ‘The Transformation of Political Community: E.H. Carr, Critical Theory and International Relations’, Review of International Studies 23:3, 321–38. — (1998), The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of the PostWestphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity). Lynch, M. (2000), ‘The D ialogue of Civilizations and International Public Spheres’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29:2, 307–30. Mearsheimer, J., and Walt, S. (2003), ‘An Unnecessary War’, Foreign Policy 134, 50– 59. Morgenthau, H. (1985), Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 6th edn (New York: Knopf). Murray, A.J.H. (1996), ‘The Moral Politics of Hans Morgenthau,’ The Review of Politics 59:1, 81–107. Petito, F. (2007), ‘The Global Political D iscourse of D ialogue among Civilizations: Mohammad Khatami and Václav Havel’, Global Change, Peace and Security 19:2, 103–26. Ruland, V. (2002), Conscience across Borders: An Ethics of Global Rights and Religious Pluralism (San Francisco: University of San Francisco Press). Shapcott, R. (2001), Justice, Community and Dialogue in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

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27 The Transformation of Political Community and Conceptions of Global Citizenship William Smith

This chapter surveys recent controversies within international political theory about the evolution of political community and the emergence of globally orientated conceptions of citizenship. A ‘political community’ is defined here as an association of individuals who are governed by shared institutions and united by solidarity ties (Held 1995, 200). ‘Citizenship’ is understood as having two connotations. First, it denotes the status of membership in a political community. Citizens enjoy legal and moral entitlements against the community, but will also be held to be under legal and moral obligations to their fellow citizens (Marshall 1992). Second, it denotes a sense of attachment to the political community in which one is a member. Citizenship is an aspect of personal identity, in that citizens identify with their community and value the contribution that they make to it (Weinstock 2001, 55). There are clearly many forms of political community and many conceptions of citizenship (Miller 2000, 41–61). The form of political community that is central to this chapter is the democratic nation-state (Habermas 2000, 62–5). In such a polity, a democratic association of free and equal citizens is explicitly or implicitly identified with a territorially bounded national community united by ‘common sympathies’ (Rawls 1999, 23–5). The democratic nation-state possesses an institutional architecture that safeguards the rights of citizens and facilitates a process of collective selfdetermination (Held 1995, 145–6). Citizens are motivated to support this process by virtue of their shared nationality, which provides, it is argued, an important basis for civic solidarity (Miller 2000, 31–3). D ebates about the transformation of political community generally focus on challenges to the democratic nation-state that are allegedly posed by ‘globalization’ (Held and McGrew 2007a, 4). ‘Globalization and fragmentation’, it is argued, ‘erode traditional conceptions of community and reduce the moral significance of borders’ (Linklater 1998, 5). A symptom of this erosion – and one that cosmopolitan political theorists are keen to endorse – is

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns the emergence of ‘global citizens’ who identify with humanity in addition to, or instead of, their national community (Scholte 2005, 241–4). This chapter will provide a snapshot of the diverse literature on globalization, political community and global citizenship. The first section takes a closer look at the various ways in which globalization is said to be challenging the democratic nation-state. It will also briefly survey the backlash against globalization theory that has emerged in some quarters, focusing specifically on the charge that the impact of globalization on political community has been overstated. The second section addresses the attempts of some political theorists to reinvent political community for a global age. It provides critical commentaries on three contrasting theoretical approaches: global constitutionalism, cosmopolitan democracy and cosmopolitan republicanism. The third section turns to contemporary debates surrounding the idea of global citizenship. It focuses on the duties, virtues and attachments that are increasingly associated with the ideal of cosmopolitan citizenship.

Globalization and the Challenge to Political Community The thesis that globalization is occasioning a transformation of political community is based upon an empirical analysis of contemporary trends and developments. This analysis is deeply controversial, as is demonstrated by substantial disagreement about the impact of globalization on democratic nation-states and the novelty of globalization per se. Commentators who suggest that globalization is heralding a transformation in political community focus primarily on its consequences for the steering capacity and cultural integrity of the democratic nation-state. Globalization is, as one would expect, a contested concept, with multiple definitions on offer in the literature (Albrow 1996, 90–93; Scholte 2005, 49–84). It refers to a complex set of economic, political and cultural developments that have the cumulative effect of deepening connections between and across territorially bounded societies (Stiglitz 2002, 9–10). As D avid Held puts it, ‘globalization denotes a shift in the spatial form of human organisation and activity to transcontinental or inter-regional patterns of activity, interaction and the exercise of power’ (1995, 340). Globalization theorists argue that interconnectivity is more extensive and intensive than before thanks to institutional and technological innovations that facilitate a dramatic compression of space and time (Bauman 1998, 2; Giddens 1990, 63–5; Harvey 2000, 53–72). The upshot of this interconnectivity, according to some, is that democratic nation-states are no longer able to exercise full control over their affairs. This claim is based on what is alleged to be a gap between the formal autonomy of democratic nation-states and the actual constraints imposed upon them by globalization (Held 1995, 99–140; Castells 2004, 402–14; Sassen 1996, 1–32). The example that is invoked most commonly in this context is the constraints on nation-states imposed by globally mobile capital (Beck 2005, 116–65). The ability of global economic actors to invest capital in different territorial locations supposedly compels nation-states to 462

Po l it ic al Co mmunit y and Co nc ept io ns o f Gl o bal Cit izensh ip pursue ‘business-friendly’ policies of deregulation and welfare state retrenchment (Habermas 2000, 76–80). A more general phenomenon is the range of policy areas – including regulation of global financial markets, environmental and ecological degradation, cross-border policing and global security challenges – that cannot be effectively managed by individual nation-states. Growing perception of the dangers posed by what Ulrich Beck describes as the ‘world risk society’ encourage states to cooperate through regional or international decision-making bodies (Beck 2006, 33–6; Woods 2000, 4–5; Held and McGrew 2002, 1–14). This new global institutional and regulatory architecture – including institutions such as the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund and World Bank – erect formal constraints on national policy, although the extent to which this architecture generally does limit nation-states tends to depend upon their relative power in the state system (Held 1995, 107–20). The problem for the democratic nation-state, then, is that interconnectivity is apparently eroding its capacity to be independent and autonomous. At the same time, distinctive national cultures are also alleged to be under attack. This is partly due to the cultural diversity brought about by immigration (Habermas 2000, 74). This diversity constitutes a political and ethical challenge for dominant ‘societal cultures’, which must adapt to greater cultural, linguistic and religious pluralism (Kymlicka 1995). Another challenge is posed by a standardized ‘global’ culture, associated with consumption of American brands and cultural products, which is driven by global markets, media and, in some respects, tourism (Habermas 2000, 74–6; Held and McGrew 2007b, 28–42). The spread of this culture is also said to be accompanied by, though not necessarily related to, an increase in the number of citizens who place global attachments over and above their national allegiances (D ower and Williams 2002). In particular, the rise of ‘transnational activism’, geared towards issues such as global justice, human rights and environmental protection, is a prominent feature of contemporary political life (Tarrow 2005). Richard Falk introduced the term ‘citizen pilgrims’ to describe persons who engage in this kind of activism: ‘they are committed more or less consciously to the construction of a compassionate global polity in the decades ahead, having already transferred their loyalties to the invisible political community of their dreams’ (Falk 1995, 211–12). The arguments that globalization is undermining the steering capacity and cultural integrity of the nation-state have been fiercely contested. In relation to the first claim, sceptics have argued that the constraints imposed by globalization on nation-states are exaggerated (Garrett 2000; Hirst and Thompson 1999). Colin Hay observes that these claims are often underpinned by dubious assumptions about the logics of capital and the behaviour of economic actors (Hay 2005, 239–44). He also suggests that empirical evidence does not offer anything like unequivocal support for the view that nation-states are constrained to pursue supposedly business friendly policies (ibid., 245–59). In relation to the second claim, critics have argued that the impact of globalization on the cultural basis of the democratic nation-state has also been exaggerated. Globalization theorists are alleged to downplay the resilience of national or local cultures, which are often capable of absorbing cultural 463

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns diversity and resisting the encroachment of a standardized ‘global’ culture (Miller 2000, 125–41; Tomlinson 2007, 160–62; Billig 1995, 128–53). In addition, anecdotal evidence and empirical studies appear to cast doubt on the idea that an ethic of global citizenship is displacing national affiliation as the principal axis of political identity (Norris 2000; Castells 2004, 332–7). The sceptics urge caution against premature claims that globalization is bringing about a significant ‘transformation’ of political community. This scepticism is being challenged, with analysts restating and refining the empirical claims that can be made about globalization (Held and McGrew 2007a). It should be stressed, however, that debates about globalization are not merely empirical in nature; theorists also point to developments associated with globalization in order to support a range of normative arguments (Miller 2000, 90–91). One line of argument focuses on the relationship between globalization and justice. Several theorists argue that the global economic order has such a pervasive impact on life chances that there is an obligation to regulate it according to principles of justice (Beitz 1999, 127–76; Buchanan 2000, 703–15; Tan 2004, 29–35). Thomas Pogge contends that the imposition of the global economic order on poorer societies by wealthy states constitutes a violation of our duties not to harm others (2002, 199–201). The current order perpetuates systematic human rights violations that could be ended through feasible institutional reforms (ibid., 204–15). Another line of argument focuses on the relationship between globalization and democracy. Some theorists argue that political communities must be established at transnational or global levels in order to reclaim the capacity for self-determination that has allegedly been lost at the level of the nation-state (Held 1995, 267–86; Kuper 2004, 1–6; Beck 2005, 166–235). In the next section, some of these arguments will be examined in more depth.

A Global Political Community? A global political community would exist insofar as humanity was united by shared political institutions and civic solidarity. The very idea appears to have more in common with the science fiction of H.G. Wells or Olaf Stapledon than the ‘realistic utopias’ of political theory (Rawls 1999). There is, however, a growing theoretical literature examining the prospects for political communities that transcend the confines of the nation-state (D elanty 2000, 51–67). The proposals generated by these debates, three of which will be discussed below, reject the idea of a world state and instead defend a multilayered system of global governance.

Global Constitutionalism The first interpretation of global political community we shall consider is Jürgen Habermas’s ‘global constitutionalism’, which defends ‘a politically constituted world society without a world government’ (2008, 316). The basis for this approach 464

Po l it ic al Co mmunit y and Co nc ept io ns o f Gl o bal Cit izensh ip is a conceptual distinction between the state, a hierarchical institutional complex that claims a monopoly on the means of legitimate coercion, and the constitution, a legal framework that specifies the rights and duties of citizens (ibid. 2006, 131). According to Habermas it is possible to establish a global constitution without introducing a world state. Global constitutionalism takes its lead from Kant’s international political theory, particularly his defence of ‘the transformation of international law as a law of states into cosmopolitan law as a law of individuals’ (Habermas 2006, 124; see also Brown 2006). Habermas argues that a global constitution should organize political life across three spatial levels (2008, 322–7). The first, supranational, level is to be governed by a single world organization with clearly defined and limited competences. This organization, run by the representatives of nation-states, will be restricted in its policy aims to securing world peace and upholding human rights. Although territorially bounded political communities will still bear primary responsibility for upholding the rights and liberties of their citizens, the world organization will be an additional guarantor of basic human rights: [I]n their role as subjects of international law – as cosmopolitan citizens – these citizens have issued the world organization as a kind of indemnity … to act on their behalf as a stand-in in cases of emergency when the principal agent, their own government, is no longer able or willing to protect their rights (ibid., 340). The world organization must have the authority and capacity to uphold the legal status of cosmopolitan citizenship in the face of ‘criminal acts’ carried out by governments (Habermas 1999, 268). The second, transnational, level must become an arena of cross-border political cooperation for the governance of a broader policy agenda. This requires the creation of political communities at regional or continental levels, modelled on the EU, which have the capacity to resolve problems that, thanks to globalization, are now beyond the effective control of individual nation-states. The third, national, level apparently remains an important site of political community, but given the range of policies that are to be addressed at transnational levels – economic regulation, environmental and ecological preservation, crime and policing – its competences are likely to be severely limited (Scheuerman 2008, 16–17). Global constitutionalism envisages a world administered by a multilayered system of political institutions. As Habermas is at pains to stress, however, this reformed global order constitutes a political ‘community’ only in a very limited sense. In particular, the world organization is not conceptualized as the embodiment of a global democratic community. This is because, according to Habermas, ‘any political community that wants to understand itself as a democracy must at least distinguish between members and non-members’ (2000, 107). This rather surprising claim appears to be based upon assumptions about the cultural preconditions of democracy. A democratic community is bound together by ‘constitutional patriotism’, a collective political identity that coalesces around particularistic interpretations of universal constitutional principles (1998, 225). A sense of collective identity robust 465

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns enough to sustain democratic politics is only feasible at national and transnational levels: ‘this ethical-political self-understanding of citizens of a particular democratic life is missing in the inclusive community of world citizens’ (2000, 107). The absence of a global collective identity does not, however, undermine the legitimacy of a world organization. Such an organization only requires consensus over global security, human rights and the procedural means through which they will be secured (2008, 343). The beginnings of a consensus can be detected when ‘shared moral indignation extends across the gulfs separating different cultures, forms of life and religions in response to egregious human rights violations and manifest acts of aggression’ (ibid., 344). This thin ethic of ‘cosmopolitan solidarity’ should, according to Habermas, be sufficient to guarantee the legitimacy of the world organization in the eyes of global citizens (2000, 108). D espite its impressive scope, Habermas’s project has not escaped criticism (Fine and Smith 2003). The following three concerns relate specifically to his hopes for a world organization. First, critics have questioned the sharp distinction Habermas draws between world state and global constitution. Although it may lack monopoly on the legitimate use of coercion, the world organization would certainly require ‘state-like’ qualities – such as an effective executive body and an independent military force – in order to enforce cosmopolitan law. This places strain on Habermas’s belief that global constitutionalism would not, in the end, require the establishment of something very much like a world government (Scheuerman 2008, 141–2). Second, Habermas arguably downplays the difficulty of securing the level of global consensus required for the legitimacy of the world organization. This consensus is limited to ‘clear negative duties of a universalistic morality – the duty not to engage in wars of aggression and not to commit crimes against humanity’ (Habermas 2006, 143). The benefits of consensus over these ‘negative duties’ is limited, however, in that there is clearly no agreement over how they might be interpreted and enforced by a world organization (Scheuerman 2008, 144–5). Third, some have suggested that a world organization comprised of nationstates may be an unreliable guardian of human rights. This is because nation-states, even when cooperating in intergovernmental organizations, may place their own corporate interests over and above the interests of individuals. The cosmopolitan political theorist D aniele Archibugi argues that the responsibility for upholding human rights should be taken out of the hands of states altogether and, ideally, given to a ‘world parliament’ that might better represent the interests of a global citizenry (2004, 10). In response to this last point, Habermas can fall back on his case against the very idea of global democracy. In the absence of solidarity ties that might underpin a global democratic praxis, he contends, the best we can hope for is a reformed version of the intergovernmental world organization that we are already familiar with (2000, 110–12). This may reflect a sensible concession to political reality, but – as we shall see – not all theorists have been so willing to abandon aspirations to democratize the ‘supranational’ arena.

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Po l it ic al Co mmunit y and Co nc ept io ns o f Gl o bal Cit izensh ip Cosmopolitan Democracy An approach which retains the ambition of relocating democracy at the global level is developed by D avid Held. His model of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ resembles global constitutionalism, in that it also calls for the establishment of a global legal order to safeguard the rights of world citizens. It also endorses a multilayered system of governance, operating at global, regional and national levels. Held’s approach differs from Habermas’s, though, in its institutional specifics and in its faith in the possibility of a global democratic community. The basis for Held’s project is a strong normative commitment to the principle of autonomy. This principle requires that: persons should enjoy equal rights and, accordingly, equal obligations in the specification of the political framework which generates and limits the opportunities available to them; that is, they should be free and equal in the determination of the conditions of their own lives, so long as they do not deploy this framework to negate the rights of others (1995, 147). This principle of autonomy entails two, apparently related, normative claims. The first is that individuals should enjoy the rights and liberties necessary for personal autonomy and participation in public life. The second is that political communities, understood as associations of free and equal citizens, should be able to collectively determine their own affairs (ibid., 145–6). The nation-state, according to Held, is an inadequate means of realizing autonomy in an age of globalization, when opportunities for cross-border interference are rife and political communities lack the capacity to determine their own affairs (ibid., 99–140). He therefore argues that ‘commitment to the principle of autonomy entails a duty to work towards the establishment of an international community of democratic states and societies committed to upholding democratic public law both within and across their own boundaries: a cosmopolitan democratic community’ (ibid., 229). The new global community must be constituted through the establishment of cosmopolitan democratic law (ibid., 227). This law, which should guarantee the basic rights of all citizens, must be incorporated into national and transnational constitutions, with international courts on hand to adjudicate citizen complaints against their own governments (ibid.). Cosmopolitan law must also distribute political power across different spatial levels, with competences determined according to which level would offer the most effective and representative governance of different policy areas. There would, according to Held, be substantial scope for sub-national governance, at city or workplace levels, opening up opportunities for a revival of participatory and direct forms of democracy (ibid., 234). At the same time, institutions in the nation-state would be augmented by transnational and global sites of democracy. The institutional innovations proposed by Held include ‘the possibility of general referenda cutting across nations and nation-states in the case of contested priorities concerning the implementation of democratic law and the balance of public expenditure, with 467

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns constituencies defined according to the nature and scope of disputed problems’ (ibid., 273). He also envisages the creation of a world parliament, an assembly whose members would be directly elected by the populations of democratic nations. This parliament, which could initially augment and perhaps eventually replace the UN, would constitute an authoritative centre for debating pressing global problems, such as health and disease, food supply, debt and poverty, and global warming (ibid., 274). The idea of cosmopolitan democracy has been refined by Held in a number of publications (2002; 2004). Given its ambition, it is perhaps unsurprising that, as well as receiving considerable praise, it has also attracted copious criticism. First, critics complain that cosmopolitan democracy works with a rather statist conception of political authority. Cosmopolitan democracy aims for the establishment of familiar styles of government – binding legal norms enforced in a top-down fashion by system level institutions – albeit on a much larger scale (D ryzek 2000, 117–21). The problem is that this may reproduce and even exacerbate the vicissitudes of these institutions, such as their unresponsive and hierarchical modes of administration (D ryzek 2006, 151–4). Second, cosmopolitan democracy is often alleged to confront difficulties in demarcating democratic constituencies. This problem is raised by D avid Miller in relation to Held’s proposal for transnational referenda; it will, he suggests, be almost impossible to determine who should be eligible to vote in such democratic exercises (2000, 94). Cosmopolitan democrats suggest that all those ‘affected’ by political decisions should be incorporated, but critics contend that this is not a sufficiently clear or robust basis for democratic inclusion (Caney 2005, 156– 9). A final criticism is that Held does not provide a convincing account of the social preconditions of democracy and how they might be replicated at global levels. The claim, often advanced by republicans or communitarians, is that democracy requires a certain commonality among citizens – including a shared culture and language, ties of mutual trust, commitment to political principles – which is simply absent at the global level (Kymlicka 2001, 323–6; Miller 2000, 94–6). The last problem highlights the difficulties posed by grounding cosmopolitan democracy in a principle of autonomy. This principle, along with the wide range of rights and liberties that follow from it, is, as Held concedes, intimately tied to Western traditions of political thought (2002, 24–6). It may, therefore, be practically and normatively difficult to defend it as a foundation for cosmopolitan democracy in the light of substantial global disagreement over its meaning and its acceptability to non-Western societies (Benhabib 2006, 43ff; Cohen 2004, 210–213; Rawls 1999, 59–62). In response to such concerns, Held insists that the meaning of autonomy is not ‘fixed’ but is subject to an ongoing deliberative process (2002, 32). His hope appears to be that, in and through inclusive global dialogue, a cross-cultural consensus over the meaning and acceptability of autonomy may gradually emerge. This consensus might, over time, provide a shared basis for a cosmopolitan political community.

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Po l it ic al Co mmunit y and Co nc ept io ns o f Gl o bal Cit izensh ip Cosmopolitan Republicanism Cosmopolitan democracy is not the only theoretical paradigm that looks to the role of deliberation in forging new political communities (Smith and Brassett 2008). This theme is also prominent in James Bohman’s account of ‘cosmopolitan republicanism’ (2001). Cosmopolitan republicanism proposes a similar set of institutional reforms to our previous two models; in particular, it endorses the by now familiar idea of a multilayered institutional structure (Bohman 2007, 44). At the same time, it works with a different interpretation of democracy and – partly for this reason – claims to avoid the challenge posed to its rivals by the absence of solidarity ties across national borders. Cosmopolitan republicanism proceeds from a critique of the interpretation of democracy that is said to inform the global constitutionalism of Habermas and the cosmopolitan democracy of Held. According to Bohman, these theorists make the conceptual mistake of describing democracy as a process of selfdetermination by a singular ‘dêmos’. This is why Habermas and Held remain caught in a conceptual framework within which democracy is inextricably linked to a political community bound by strong solidarity ties (Bohman 2007, 39–42). Against this view, Bohman argues that the singular democratic subject should be radically decentred. This move is bolstered through pointing to the impossibility of demarcating self-legislating political communities in a globally interconnected world (2004, 340–41). D emocracy must be conceptualized as a rule of overlapping ‘dêmoi’, involving governance in and across multiple units and levels, against the backdrop of a ‘larger political community of humanity’ (2007, 5). The normative basis of this vision is the republican value of freedom as non-domination, defined as a ‘democratic minimum’ that grants all persons meaningful opportunities to, first, combat arbitrary exercises of power over them and, second, form and revise the terms of their association with others (ibid., 45–55). The democratic minimum guarantees that all citizens enjoy ‘communicative freedom’, defined as ‘the freedom to address others and be addressed as members of publics’ (ibid., 8). The centrality of communicative freedom means that the ‘public sphere’ emerges as an important element of cosmopolitan republican politics. Bohman identifies three features of public spheres. First, the public sphere is a forum within which participants identify themselves as a public and engage in reasongiving. Second, participants in the public sphere must manifest a commitment to freedom and equality. Third, participants address an indefinite audience with a reasonable expectation of receiving some kind of response (ibid., 60–61). It is in and through participation in public spheres that citizens exercise their communicative freedom and, in so doing, initiate deliberation about the terms of their association with others. The public sphere, like democracy itself, should be conceptualized as radically decentred: ‘a public of publics rather than a distinctively unified and encompassing public sphere in which all communicators participate’ (ibid., 77). The hope is that transnational public spheres, which cut across national borders, will emerge as effective means of influencing and shaping political power at global levels (ibid., 79–92). Transnational public spheres should act as a bridge between 469

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns currently unrepresentative global institutions and the populations affected by their policies. The opportunities for domination opened up by globalization can then be contested in a democratic fashion (ibid., 22–5). Cosmopolitan republicanism is an intriguing attempt to improve upon global constitutionalism and cosmopolitan democracy. It also represents a sustained effort to turn the tables on republican-inspired criticisms of these theories. According to Bohman, ‘while many civic-republicans see like-mindedness or a common identity as a condition of political freedom, cosmopolitan and federalist republicans think that, in fact, deliberation is more likely to be responsive to claims against domination when the citizenry is large and diverse’ (ibid., 36). This is based on the influential view that a culturally homogenous political community may be less receptive to dissenting opinions than diverse polities that incorporate a plurality of perspectives (Calhoun 2002, 292). D espite this defence of pluralism, however, cosmopolitan republicanism would clearly be impossible in the absence of any and all solidarity ties. This becomes clear when we reflect on the complexion of transnational publics. Notwithstanding their ‘anonymous’ and ‘decentred’ qualities, transnational publics are comprised of participants who manifest an egalitarian commitment to the freedom and equality of all global citizens. The critique of cosmopolitan democracy advanced by non-cosmopolitan republicans is precisely that the motivation for this kind of egalitarian commitment will be absent without the relations of mutual trust sustained by nationality (Miller 2000, 94–6). The problem for cosmopolitan republicanism is that, in the absence of pre-existing ties of attachment or solidarity, it is not immediately clear how a transnational public comes to view itself as a public. This line of criticisms perhaps overlooks the extent to which participation in transnational politics can itself engender ties of solidarity (Calhoun 2002, 286–95). This, indeed, is suggested by Bohman in his account of the role that ‘mini-publics’ – randomly selected citizens brought together to discuss particular issues – can play in global governance. These ‘experimental efforts’ can, he tells us, play a key role in creating ‘self-consciously organized publics’ (Bohman 2007, 88). The defence of cosmopolitan republicanism is, then, similar to that offered by Held, in that it focuses on the long-term effects of deliberation on citizens and communities. The general idea is that political identities are not set in stone, but are artificial creations that are subject to cosmopolitan transformation in and through transnational political activity (Cochran 2002, 538; Weinstock 2001, 54–9; Habermas 2006, 79–81).

The Ideal of Global Citizenship D ebates about global citizenship often revolve around the legal and political rights it entails. The three paradigms discussed above all address this issue; each, in different ways, defends the claim that persons have fundamental human rights that must, if necessary, be upheld by the global community. But this theme does not exhaust contemporary debates about global citizenship. In addition to denoting a 470

Po l it ic al Co mmunit y and Co nc ept io ns o f Gl o bal Cit izensh ip legal or political status, global citizenship is also associated with ‘a way of being in the world’ and ‘a way of constructing an identity for oneself’ (Waldron 2000, 227). Global citizenship is, in part, a moral ideal, denoting a set of duties, virtues and attachments. This chapter concludes by surveying some emerging interpretations of this ideal.

Cosmopolitan Duties Global citizenship is generally associated with cosmopolitanism, the basic idea of which is that every individual is a ‘citizen of the world’. Cosmopolitan citizenship is sometimes identified in a non-political sense with a certain way of life; a citizen of the world is one who likes to ‘move between cultures’ and who self-consciously pursues a ‘hybrid lifestyle’ (Kymlicka 1995, 85; Waldron 1992, 763). Cosmopolitan citizenship is more commonly described in explicitly moral or political terms; a citizen of the world is one who recognizes duties and obligations to humanity as a whole and not merely to their national communities. The precise nature of these cosmopolitan duties is a matter of great dispute, as is the issue of how globally conscientious citizens should discharge them. Thomas Pogge introduces a distinction that is relevant in this context. Starting from the idea of moral cosmopolitanism – the view that all persons stand in certain moral relations to each other – he distinguishes between interactional and institutional conceptions (2002, 169–70). The former will postulate principles of ethics that apply directly to the conduct of persons and groups; the primary responsibility for discharging cosmopolitan duties resides, according to this account, with any actor in a position to do so (Singer 1972; Unger 1996; Kagan 1989). The latter will, by contrast, defend principles of justice for assessing the institutions that regulate human interaction; the main responsibility for realizing cosmopolitan aims resides, according to this view, with specified institutional schemes (Pogge 2002; O’Neill 2000; Beitz 1983). These two conceptions are by no means mutually exclusive, but they generate different accounts of how globally conscientious citizens should discharge their cosmopolitan duties. Those who favour interactional conceptions emphasize the various ways that citizens can directly discharge their duties to humanity. It has been argued, for example, that persons in wealthy societies who spend more than they need to on basic resources should make direct wealth transfers, perhaps through donations to charitable organizations, to persons in poorer societies (Singer 1972). Those who favour institutional conceptions argue that individuals should discharge their cosmopolitan duties indirectly, via institutional schemes; as Pogge puts it, citizens have ‘a shared responsibility for the justice of any practices [they] help to impose’ (2002, 170). Citizens should, therefore, attend to the ways in which the institutional schemes in which they are involved promote or frustrate cosmopolitan aims. The ethic of ‘cosmopolitan solidarity’ defended by Habermas requires that citizens must, at the very least, not punish their governments for ‘operating on the cooperative procedures of a cosmopolitan community rather than those of national 471

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns independence’ (2000, 112). The ideal of citizenship defended by Andrew Linklater involves a duty to promote ‘dialogic communities which are cosmopolitan in orientation, respectful of cultural differences and committed to reducing social and economic inequalities’ (1998, 109). Citizens should aim to transform their communities in cosmopolitan directions, in order that excluded and marginalized groups, such as immigrant communities, are included on a more equal footing (1998, 184–9). The institutional frameworks that govern international relations must also be reformed, in order to pursue improvements in the condition of globally disadvantaged individuals and societies (1998, 204–11). Although there is disagreement about the range of cosmopolitan duties and the ways in which they should be discharged, it is clear that the prospects for cosmopolitan progress depend to a significant degree on the actions of globally conscientious citizens. In the absence of sufficient numbers of good cosmopolitan citizens, who recognize and act on their cosmopolitan duties, even a minimal realization of cosmopolitan aspirations appears to be unlikely.

Cosmopolitan Virtue This insight has stimulated recent interest in the question of cosmopolitan ‘virtue’ (Smith 2007). Cosmopolitan virtues are dispositions, qualities or character traits that make us sensitive to our cosmopolitan duties. An intriguing attempt to construct an account of cosmopolitan virtue is provided by the social theorist Bryan Turner. He defends a cosmopolitan duty to protect cultural diversity, which requires ‘a careful engagement with cultural issues such as the protection of so-called primitive cultures and aboriginal communities which are clearly threatened by the globalisation of culture’ (2002, 59). He argues that an account of cosmopolitan virtue must describe the skills or character traits that will enable persons to discharge this duty. The virtuous cosmopolitan citizen should, according to Turner, cultivate an ironic disposition. He associates irony with achieving ‘distance’ from our homeland and way of life, adopting a sceptical attitude towards ‘grand narratives’, and accepting the provisional nature of our ‘final vocabularies’ (ibid., 58–9). An ironic disposition is, Turner contends, directly linked to our ability to acknowledge cosmopolitan duties: ‘scepticism and distance from one’s own tradition are the basis of an obligation of care and stewardship for other cultures’ (ibid., 57). These references to ‘scepticism’ and ‘distance’ are not meant to imply that the ironic citizen lacks any patriotic allegiances. Indeed, we are told that ‘irony may only be possible when one already has an emotional commitment to place’ (ibid., 55). The ironic citizen understands what it is to have an attachment to a culture or homeland, but combines this sentiment with an intensely critical and questioning attitude. This attitude will enable the ironic citizen to ‘interact constantly with strangers’ and engage in ‘dialogue with other cultures’ (ibid., 58). This interpretation of cosmopolitan virtue may be guilty of overstating the capacity of irony to motivate a genuinely cosmopolitan engagement with the world. (Smith 2007, 40–42). Although irony may enable us to achieve distance from 472

Po l it ic al Co mmunit y and Co nc ept io ns o f Gl o bal Cit izensh ip our parochial ties and commitments, it is not altogether clear that it will make us any more likely to discharge cosmopolitan duties. It is interesting that other philosophers who defend irony as a personal ethic are cautious about depicting it as a political virtue (Rorty 1989, 87). This caution perhaps derives from concerns that irony may be a rather debilitating way of being in the world, as likely to encourage introspection and apathy as care and engagement. In addition, the questioning of final vocabularies associated with irony may turn out to be a somewhat cruel activity. Richard Rorty reminds us that ‘the best way to cause people long-lasting pain is to humiliate them by making the things that seemed most important to them look futile, obsolete, and powerless’ (1989, 89). This suggests that irony may not always facilitate the kind of harmonious and respectful cross-cultural dialogue hoped for by Turner.

Cosmopolitanism and Patriotism D espite these concerns, the general intuition behind Turner’s argument appears to be sound. We can surely only recognize and act on duties to humanity if we are not so blinded by national allegiances that we cannot or will not expand our horizons of moral concern beyond the borders of our nation. At the very least, we must, like Turner’s cosmopolitan ironist, be capable of achieving a certain distance from our communitarian attachments. This idea animates Martha Nussbaum’s influential critique of patriotism and her robust defence of cosmopolitan citizenship. A cosmopolitan is described by Nussbaum as a ‘person whose allegiance is to the worldwide community of human beings’ (1996, 4). She traces this ideal to the philosophy of the Stoics, who argued that ‘we should recognize humanity wherever it occurs, and give its fundamental ingredients, reason and moral capacity, our first allegiance and respect’ (ibid., 7). Cosmopolitanism does not require us to abandon our local affiliations. Nussbaum appeals to the Stoic idea that the self is surrounded by a series of concentric circles, which includes family, neighbourhood, city, nation and humanity (ibid., 9). Our local affiliations are, though, subordinate to our duties to humanity in an important sense: giving our more immediate ‘circles’ special priority is, according to Nussbaum, justifiable only to the extent that doing so is the best way to promote the well-being of humanity as a whole (ibid., 13). A cosmopolitan ethic is contrasted with patriotism, in that the latter is based upon national boundaries that are ‘morally arbitrary’. The danger of patriotism is that it obscures our duties to humanity by teaching us to think that our own nation is ‘worthy of special respect’ (ibid., 15). This strong formulation of cosmopolitan citizenship has been criticized on the grounds that local allegiances, including patriotic ties, have an intrinsic value that is not reducible to their tendency to promote the well-being of humanity (Parekh 2003, 7). Other cosmopolitans have been keen to avoid this objection; it would be wrong, they argue, to hold that national attachments are reducible to cosmopolitan duties, though the latter may, in certain respects, constrain or balance the former (Tan 2004, 144–51). It has also been suggested that, although they are indisputably 473

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns the product of contingent histories, national borders should not be presented as ‘morally arbitrary’. These borders assume moral and political significance, it is argued, insofar as they become ‘integrated into the life of the community’ (Parekh 2003, 9). A particularly common objection to Nussbaum’s argument is that she overstates the tension between cosmopolitanism and patriotism. The figure of the ‘cosmopolitan patriot’ has been introduced to show that attachment to humanity can be combined with loyalty to the political life of the nation (Appiah 1996). This idea recalls Turner’s claim that virtuous cosmopolitan citizens do not need to renounce their patriotic allegiances; what is important is that patriotism be interpreted in such a way that it can be reconciled with cosmopolitan commitments. The most serious criticism of Nussbaum’s view is that global citizenship itself is an ephemeral notion. This objection is stated eloquently by Michael Walzer, when he observes that ‘I am not even aware that there is a world such that one could be a citizen of it’ (1996, 125). In the absence of a global legal or political community to which citizens might be said to ‘belong’, the ideal of cosmopolitan citizenship appears to lack purchase in our world. A response to this objection might be to argue that globalization has already forged a kind of global community, constituted by the emerging human rights regime and by the experience of shared risk (Beck 2006). As we saw in the first section, however, such claims are hotly contested. A different response is to say that cosmopolitan citizenship is important precisely because we live in a world without a global political community. This point is anticipated by Jeremy Waldron: ‘if anything, the absence of a coercive institution to secure and sustain necessary structures of life and practice at a global level … makes it all the more important for us to use “citizens of the world” as an idea regulating our actions’ (2003, 41). According to this line of thought, globally conscious individuals must aim to transform political communities in order that cosmopolitan citizenship becomes more firmly embedded in our institutional structures. Until that time, it must inspire our action as a ‘promissory note issued across time and space’ (Linklater 1998, 206).

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Po l it ic al Co mmunit y and Co nc ept io ns o f Gl o bal Cit izensh ip Benhabib, S. (2006), Another Cosmopolitanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Billig, M. (1995), Banal Nationalism (London: Sage). Bohman, J. (2001), ‘Cosmopolitan Republicanism’, The Monist 84:1, 3–21. — (2004), ‘Republican Cosmopolitanism’, Journal of Political Philosophy 12:1, 336– 52. — (2007), Democracy Across Borders (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Brown, G.W. (2006), ‘Kant’s Cosmopolitan Law and the Idea of a Cosmopolitan Constitution’, History of Political Thought 27:4, 661–84. Buchanan, A. (2000), ‘Rawls’s Law of Peoples: Rules for a Vanished Westphalian World?’, Ethics 110:4, 697–721. Calhoun, C. (2002), ‘Constitutional Patriotism and the Public Sphere’, in de Greiff, P., and Cronin, C. (eds), Global Justice and Transnational Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Caney, S. (2005), Justice Beyond Borders (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Castells, M. (2004), The Power of Identity, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell). Cochran, M. (2002), ‘A D emocratic Critique of Cosmopolitan D emocracy: Pragmatism from the Bottom Up’, European Journal of International Relations 8:4, 517–548. Cohen, J. (ed.) (1996), For Love of Country? (Boston, MA: Beacon Press). — (2004), ‘Minimalism About Human Rights: The Best We Can Hope For?’, Journal of Political Philosophy 12:2, 190–213. D elanty, G. (2000), Citizenship in a Global Age (Buckingham: Open University Press). D ower, N., and Williams J. (eds) (2002), Global Citizenship: A Critical Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). D ryzek, J.S. (2000), Deliberative Democracy and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press). — (2006), Deliberative Global Politics (Cambridge: Polity). Falk, R. (1995), On Humane Governance (Cambridge: Polity). Fine, R., and Smith, W. (2003), ‘Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Cosmopolitanism’, Constellations 10:4, 469–87. Garrett, G. (2000), ‘Globalization and National Autonomy’, in Woods (ed.). Giddens, A. (1990), The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity). Habermas, J. (1998), The Inclusion of the Other (Cambridge: Polity). — (1999), ‘Bestiality and Humanity: A War on the Border between Legality and Morality’, Constellations 6:3, 263–72. — (2000), The Postnational Constellation (Cambridge: Polity). — (2006), The Divided West (Cambridge: Polity). — (2008), Between Naturalism and Religion (Cambridge: Polity). Harvey, D . (2000), Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press). Hay, C. (2005), ‘Globalization’s Impact on States’, in Ravenhill, J. (ed.), Global Political Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Held, D . (1995), Democracy and the Global Order (Cambridge: Polity). — (2002), ‘Law of States, Law of Peoples’, Legal Theory 8:2, 1–44. — (2004), Global Covenant (Cambridge: Polity). 475

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Index 9/11 221 Abidjan 369 absolute pacifism 185–6 Abu Ghraib prison 124 Aceh 155 AD (assured destruction) 177–80 adultism 253 aesthetic ethicality 90 African human rights 210 A genda 21 387 aggregation objection to environmental justice claims 362 aggregative democracy 266 aggression 120–21 alienation 65–6 alter-casting 432 alter-globalization 428, 435–9 Amnesty International 237 anarchism 191–2 anti-corporate movement 378 anti-egalitarianism 337–8 anti-war internationalism 190–94, 196–7 anti-war pacifism 187–90 anticipatory attacks 119–23 Archibugi, D aniele 53, 72, 466 A rgentina 277 Aristotle 235–6 Armenian genocide 223, 227 ascriptive groups 402 Asian exceptionalism 272 Asian human rights 210 Association for the Taxation of Financial Transaction for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC) 430

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), D eclaration of Concord 1976 155 associative-groups 402–3 assured destruction 177–80 astroturfing 388 atomic bomb see nuclear weapons Australia 317 Bangladeshi genocide 225 Basel Convention 367–8, 369 basic needs normative theory 340, 341–2 Beitz, Charles 82, 295, 297–8, 400–401 Bellamy, Richard 29, 37 benevolent quarantine 123–4 biological weapons 167, 168, 169, 170, 172, 174–5, 177–8 bluewashing 388 Bohman, James 469–70 Bosnia Herzegovina 142, 226 Brazilian landless movement 431 Brown, Chris 32, 36, 82, 141, 445 Bulley, D an 102, 107–8 Burke, Edmund 31–2 Business Leaders Initiative on Human R ights 385 Butler, Judith 103, 108, 421 Cambodia 137–8, 222, 225 Campbell, D avid 97, 99–108 C anada 224 capabilities 85, 300–301 capitalism 28, 35–6, 419 Caputo, John D . 97, 101 care ethics 86, 87–9, 92

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns counter-hegemonic 70 global 53–4, 68–9, 71–2 politicisation 70 civil society organisations (CSOs) 377 civilian-based defence 194–6 clash of civilizations 448–9 Climate Action Partnership (US) 389 cluster bombs 176 collective agency 430 collective responsibility 303 collective security 55, 143, 159 colonialism 52 genocide 219–20 Commission on Human Security (CHS) 154, 156 communal autonomy 396 communicative action theory 69 communism and liberalism 35 communitarian critique of liberalism 37 compassion 87 compatriot prioritisation 301–4 Congo, D emocratic Republic of 158, 163, 227 conscientious objection 188–9 conscientious pacifism 184–7, 191, 196 anarchism 191–2 the state 192 constitutional patriotism 68 constitutions 265 consumerism and critical theory 67 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of D iscrimination Against Women (CED AW) 238–9 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 217–18, 227 Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) 247, 250–51, 256, 257–8, 277 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 311–13 corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSER) 379–82 corporate social responsibility (CSR) 379–81

case law for genocide 220 categorical imperative 29 causation objection to environmental justice claims 362 CED AW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of D iscrimination Against Women) 238–9 Chad truth commission 281 Chavez, Hugo 73–4 chemical weapons 168, 169, 170, 172, 174–5, 177 children adult lifeworld 255 age limits 251–3 agency 253 boundary with adulthood 252–5 citizenship 255–6 consumer culture 255 corporal punishment 257 cosseting of 254 death penalty 257 economic usefulness 254 enfranchisement 255 family 256 human rights 247–58 internet 255 new technology 255 power dynamics 254 public life 253 right to identity 277 safety 254 Children’s Charter 248 China, Peoples’ Republic of 28 Christian anarchism 192 Christian non-resistance 184 Christianity 186–7, 189, 451 CHS (Commission on Human Security) 154, 156 Cicero 47 citizens and refugees’ rights 314–15 citizens of the world 45–9, 59 citizenship 255–6, 319, 461, 470–74 civil society autonomy of 67 cosmopolitan democracy 56 480

Index feminist ethics 90–91 gender 90 womens human rights violations 236 Cynics 45–6

cosmopolitan democracy 53, 54, 55–8, 59, 467–8 cosmopolitan democratic law 55 cosmopolitan dialogue 454–7 cosmopolitan duties 471–2 cosmopolitan global governance 415–17 cosmopolitan justice 58 cosmopolitan law 4, 52, 55, 58 cosmopolitan republicanism 469–70 cosmopolitan virtues 472–3 cosmopolitanism basic premises 44–5 classical roots of 45–8 definition 43–5 democratic legitimacy 57 European Union 57 foreign policies 58 Habermas, Jürgen 55–8 human rights 57 human security 153–63 international ethics 444–6 Kant, Immanuel 49–52 modernity 48–9 moral universalism 3 patriotism 473–4 political 397–8 pragmatic 155 radical 72–4 transitional measures 58 counter-structures 70 crime 156–7 critical IR theory 69, 91–2 critical theory 35–6, 63–4, 67–9, 430 CSER (corporate social and environmental responsibility) 379–82 CSOs (civil society organisations) 377 CSR (corporate social responsibility) 379–81 cultural autonomy 66 cultural diversity 444–6 cultural relativism 31, 85, 205, 206, 236 cultural relativity 205–6 cultural universalism 203–6 culture 66 contestation 236

D arfur 144–5, 159, 226 DD E (doctrine of double effect) 118, 173 decent societies 269–70 D eclaration of Concord 1976 155 D eclaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (D EVAW) 239–41 D eclaration on the Rights of the Child 249 deliberative democracy 266 deliberative global governance 417–18 democracy 28 accountability 263 aggregative 266 civil liberties 263 constitutions 265 cosmopolitan 53, 54–5, 467–8 deliberative 266 elective 266 famine 264 features of 263 global 270–72 globalization 55 group rights 268–9 human rights 261–73 as human rights 271–2 individual rights 268 liberal 264–5 liberalism 29–30 poverty 264 radical 266–7 rights 265 social and economic rights 267 Tocqueville, Alexis de 31 totalitarianism 31–2 violence 263 war 264 democracy as human rights 271–2 democratic nation-states 461 democratic peace thesis 5 D emocratic Republic of Congo 158, 163, 227 481

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns environmental justice definition 362 distributive justice 363–4 international 364–9 national 358–64 objections to 362 procedural justice 363 environmental racism 359 environmental stewardship 387–9 ethical discourse 329–32 ethical partiality 2–3 ethical pluralism 444, 445, 447 ethical relations 104–7 ethics alter-globalization 436–9 development policy discourse 329–30 economists 414 foreign policy 102 global governance 409–22 good conscience 98–101 international 443–4 morality 102 movement politics 427–40 politics 99–100 poststructuralism 97–8 state sovereignty 102 subjectivity 101–4 war 99–100 Ethics & International Affairs 6 ethics of care 86, 87–9 European Union 57, 68 Exxon Valdez 378

D epartment of Peacekeeping Operations (UN) 142 D errida, Jacques 73–4, 100–101, 105, 107, 319–20 deterrence in military policy 173, 177–8 D EVAW (D eclaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women) 239–41 D HR (democracy as human rights) 271–2 dialogical communities 72–4 dialogue of civilizations 449 difference in feminist ethics 90–91 dignity and human rights 340–41 D iogenes of Sinope 45–6 The Discourses on the First Decade of Livy (Machiavelli) 16 discrimination in warfare 171, 173–4 distributive justice 36–7, 293–304, 363–4 do no harm principle 339 doctrine of double effect (DD E) 118, 173 domestic violence 83–4 D onnelly, Jack 15, 18, 20, 265, 340 D oyle, Michael 5, 14–16 D PKO (D epartment of Peacekeeping Operations (UN)) 142 D ryzek, John 417–18 East Timor coffee industry 282 human security 155, 157, 158 humanitarian intervention 137 Special Panels for Serious Crimes 278–9 transitional justice 278–9 Truth Commission 282, 284 Eck, D iana 451–3 economic deprivation 157–8 economics and politics 437 economists 335, 414 Egypt 136 Einstein, Albert 188 El Salvador 157, 281 elective democracy 266 empathetic cooperation 88 End of History 35 Enlightenment 48–9, 203–4

fairness 30, 37 Falk, Richard 271–2, 463 famine 156, 157, 264 fascism 22–3 fear 15 federalism 34 feminine ethics 86, 87 feminism/feminists critical IR theory 91–2 ethics care 87 culture 90–91 482

Index modernity 216–17 by the oppressed 222–3 origins 216–18 scope of 217–18 subaltern 222–3 vengeance 226–7 Genocide Convention 217–18, 227 Germany 368 GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions 388–9 global citizenship 470–74 global civil society 53–4, 68–9, 71–2, 271, 414 Global Compact 382–3 global constitutionalism 464–6 global democracy 270–72 global distributive justice 301–4 global economic integration 414–15 global ethics 69–72, 449–50 global finance 416 global governance cosmopolitan 415–17 critiques post-structural 420–22 traditional 418–20 definition 410–13 deliberative 417–18 democratic deficit of 53, 54–5 ethical limits 418–22 ethics 409–22 global markets 414 human rights 272 human security 154 as international organization 411 multinational corporations (MNCs) 377 power 411–13 as problem-solving networks 410–11 tri-sector partnerships 389–90 Global Issues Networks 389–90 global justice, coercive measures 73 global markets 414 global political community 464–6 global political theory 409 global polity 44 Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 379

difference 90–91 and international ethics 81–3 war 92 human rights 335 international ethics 79–81, 82, 91, 92 international law 90 post-colonial 90 fetishism 66 Feuerbach, Lüdwig 65 food waste 293 Fourth World network 428 Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 388 France 31–2, 38, 116 Francisco de Vitoria 122, 135 Frankfurt School critical theory 63–4, 67–9 free market objection to environmental justice claims 362 freedom from fear 151, 156 freedom from want 151, 156 French Revolution 31–2 Frost, Mervyn 1, 82, 314–15 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 454–7 game theory 19 Gandhi, Mohandas K. 190 gang violence 156–7 GAO (General Accounting Office (US)) 359 gender 90, 233–44 General Accounting Office (US) 359 Geneva D eclaration of the Rights of the Child 248 genocidal rape 243 genocide capital punishment 227 case law 220 colonialism 219–20 definition 222 degrees of 220–21 denial 223–4 intent 218–21 international case law 220 intervention 225–6 justice 226–8 justification 221–3 483

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Held, D avid 54–6, 415–16, 421, 462–4, 467–70 HI see humanitarian intervention High Commissioner for Refugees [League of Nations] (LNHCR) 311 High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 311–12, 317–18 historical universalism 203–6 History of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides) 14–16 Hitchens, Christopher 221, 223 Hobbes, Thomas 13–14, 18–23 Holocaust 202, 216, 223 hospitality 52, 107–8, 319–20 Houston, Texas 359 HRBA (human rights-based approach) 333–4, 339, 348–9 HRBAP (human rights-based approach to programming) 348 HS see human security human development and human rights 331–2 human development approach (HD A) 341–5, 349–50 human development discourse 331 human needs, human rights 333–9 human needs discourse 331 human rights Africa 210 A sia 210 basic 269 business 382 capabilities approach 85 children 247–58 cosmopolitanism 57 decent societies 269–70 democracy 261–73 dignity 340–41 economists 335 feminists 335 foreign violators 280–83 gender 233–44 global democracy 270–72 human development 331–2 human needs 333–9

global resources dividend (GRD ) 297 Global Sullivan Principles 382 global warming 387, 388 globalization corporate-led 377–9 democracy 55 international human rights law 211 liberalism 35 multinational corporations (MNCs) 378 political 271 political community 461–2, 462–70 welfare state 57 Gramsci, Antonio 23, 67, 70–71, 434 GRD (global resources dividend) 297 Greeks and xenophobia 48 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 388–9 Greenpeace 367 greenwashing 388 GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) 379 Grotius, Hugo 135 Guantanamo Bay 124 Guatemala 157 Guinea Bissau 366 Gulf War 99 Habermas, Jürgen alter-casting 432 cosmopolitan dialogue 454–7 cosmopolitanism 56–8, 72–3 critical theory 63–4 deliberative democracy 266 European Union integration 68 global civil society 68–9 global political community 464–7 legitimisation 68 reason 67–8 H aiti 158, 222, 365 hazardous waste 358–61, 364–9 HD A (human development approach) 341–5, 349–50 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 28, 37, 65, 430 hegemony 70–71

484

Index definition 134 ethics of care 88 foreign policy analysis 139 gender 90 intentions of 138–41 motives for 138–41 Sudan 144–8 transitional justice 275 Hume, D avid 49

imperialism 336 income tax 337 individualism 30–31 institutionalisation 263, 264 international law 209–11 international relations (IR) 83 law 337 liberalism 207–8 Marxists 335 multinational corporations (MNCs) 377–8 Muslims 204–5 non-democratic states 269 non-discrimination 234, 237–8 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 211 prioritization 338–9 in the private realm 234–7, 237–8 public/private dichotomy 234–6 regional cooperation 210 religion 204 religious organizations 211–12 as sectarian and partisan values 272 state sovereignty 21–2 tradition 205 transitional states 277 transnational corporations (TNCs) 211 universalism 201–13 universality 4 violations, recognition of 280–83 violations in the private realm 234–7 women 83–5, 204, 233–44 human rights-based approach (HRBA) 333–4, 339, 348–9 human rights-based approach to programming (HRBAP) 348 human rights discourse 347–8 human rights language 336–7 human security (HS) 151–63, 225, 330, 344–7, 350–51 human security discourse 331, 332 humanism 18 humanitarian intervention constitutive nature of 134–8 criteria for undertaking 141–3

ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) 227–8 ICTY ( International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) 227, 228 identity politics 398–9 ideologies 23 Ignatieff, Michael 118, 249 immigration 297 imperialism 33–4, 89, 336 income inequality 295, 365 income tax 337, 338 individual rights 4 individualism 30 Indonesia 155 influenza pandemic of 1918 169 inheritance tax 338 injustices and alter-globalization 436–9 institutional cosmopolitanism 43–4 institutional universalism 209–12 intellectual property rights 338 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 387, 388 international anarchy 443 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) 142, 158–9 International Criminal Court (ICC) 227 International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) 227–8 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY ) 227, 278 international ethics 1, 79–86, 443–4 international human rights law 209–11 international humanitarianism 342 international justice 4, 36, 50–51 485

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns principles of 295–6 self-determination 398

International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions 384 international law 90, 122, 209–11 international political theory (IPT) 82 international relations (IR) great debates 1 Hobbes, Thomas 21 human rights 83 moral problem in 2 normative approaches to 6 normative theorizing 5 race 90 refugees 309–13, 318–19 internationals 276–7, 285–7 intervention 33, 134–8 see also humanitarian intervention genocide 225–6 imperial 135–6 state sovereignty 137, 140 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 387, 388 IR see international relations Iraq Abu Ghraib prison 124 anticipatory attack 119 intervention 100, 225–6 structural inequalities 284 transitional justice 278–9 Irish question 66 Islam 448, 451 Italy 366 Ivory Coast 369

Kant, Immanuel categorical imperative 3–4 colonialism 52 cosmopolitan law 52, 58 cosmopolitanism 49–52 international justice 50–51 liberalism 30, 208 military force 190–91 perpetual peace 32, 50, 190 republicanism 50 social contract 49–50 sovereignty 22 Khian Sea 365 Kimberley Process diamond certification scheme 151 King, Martin Luther 187 kosmopolitês 46, 48 Kosovo 142, 163, 226 Kuper, Andrew 73, 299 Kyoto Protocol 388 land mines 176 land reform 338 law 4, 47, 52, 55 see also cosmopolitan democratic law; cosmopolitan law; international human rights law; international law; public law League of Nations 310–11 legal cosmopolitanism 43–4 legitimisation 68, 70–71 Lemkin, Raphael 217 L enin 66 Leninism 23 Leviathan (Hobbes) 19–20, 22 liberal constitutionalism 23 liberal democracy 264–5 liberal nationalism 396–7 liberalism capitalism 36 communism 35 communitarian critique 37 critical theory 35–6

Jabri, Vivienne 90, 106 Japan 116 Jewish Holocaust 202, 216, 223 jus ad bellum 115, 117, 178–9 jus in bello 115, 117–18, 167, 171, 178–9 supreme emergency exemption 119 jus post bellum 115 Just and Unjust Wars (Walzer) 396 just war theory 5, 88–9, 115–31, 143, 184, 186 see also war justice 15, 36–7 see also transitional justice distributive 36–7, 293–304 486

Index Millennium D evelopment Goals (MD Gs) 151, 331–2, 339, 351–2, 387 Miller, D avid 302–3, 396, 402, 468 minimally just regimes 126–7 MNC s see multinational corporations mobility objection to environmental justice claims 362 modernity 48–52, 56–7, 216–17 modernization theory 431 Montaigne, Michel de 45–6 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de 49 moral cosmopolitanism 43–4 moral dialogue 444 moral knowledge 444–6 moral maturity 86 moral partiality 2–3 moral pluralism 443–4 moral universalism 444 morality and ethics 102 Morgenthau Plan 227 Moroccan mercenaries 116 movement politics 427–40 Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) 431 Mozambique 228 MSIs (multistakeholder initiatives) 383–4 MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra) 431 multinational corporations (MNCs) annual revenues 376 anti-corporate movement 378 civil society organisations (CSOs) 377 energy-related 388–9 environmental responsibilities 379–81 global governance 377 global supply chains 376 governance gap 377–8 human rights 205, 377–8 multistakeholder initiatives (MSIs) 383–4 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 377–8 outsourcing 376–7 social responsibilities 379–81 sweatshop labor 378

criticism of 37–8 definition 29–32 demise of 37–8 democracy 29–30 distributive justice 36–7 fairness 30, 37 France 38 globalization 35 human rights 30–31, 207–8 hypocrisy 38 imperialism 33–4 international affairs 30, 32–6 intervention 33 Kant, Immanuel 30, 208 local identity 35–6 nationalism 398 new 30, 36 optimism 37 religion 447–78 structural violence 38 Tocqueville, Alexis de 31 totalitarianism 28, 35 universalism 208–9 war 34–5 welfare state 30 Liberia 158, 163 Linklater, Andrew 72–3, 82, 454, 472 LNHCR (League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) 311 locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) 362 Locke, John 31, 33 LULUs (locally unwanted land uses) 362 Machiavelli, Niccolò 13–14, 16–18, 22–3 MAD (mutual assured destruction) 177–80 Marcus Aurelius 47, 48 marriage and gender violence 236–7 Marx, Karl 28, 64–6, 430 Marxism 64–5, 66, 67, 335 Mayer, Peter 185, 190, 192–3 MDG s see Millennium D evelopment Goals Melian D ialogue 2, 14 membership of communities 396 Microsoft 337 Mill, John Stuart 33, 36, 135 487

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns trade treaties 377 triple bottom line (TBL) 380 multinationalism 398–9 multistakeholder initiatives (MSIs) 383–4 Murray, Gilbert 34–5 Muslims and human rights 204–5 mutual assured destruction 177–80 Mytilenean debate 15

O’Neill, Onora 252, 301, 335 optimism 15, 37 Orabi Revolt 136 Orford, Anne 90, 137–8 Ottoman Empire 223 outsourcing 376–7 pacifism absolute 185–6 anarchism 191 anti-war 187–90 C hristian 184, 186–7, 189 conscientious 184–7 just war theory 184 religion 186–7 the state 191–2 Paine, Thomas 49 Parliament of the World’s Religions 449 patriotism 473–4 PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) 358–9 Perpetual Peace (Kant) 50 philosophes 49 Plato 28 Pogge, Thomas 236, 267, 296–7, 464, 471 political community 461–70 political cosmopolitanism 397–8 political imagination 59–60 political realism see realism political society 70 political universalism 209–12 politics of care 87 of compassion 87 of disclosure 438 and economics 437 and ethics 99–100 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) 358–9 population density 297 Porter, Elisabeth 80, 87 post-colonial feminists 90 poststructuralism 97–109 poverty 264, 294–5 pragmatic cosmopolitanism 155 pre-emptive strikes 119–23 preventive war 119–20

Nardin, Terry 134, 140, 151 nation-states see states national culture 66 national identity 68, 394–5, 397 national self-determination 127 nationalism 38, 395–8 natural resources, distribution of 296–7 Nazi Holocaust 202, 216, 223 NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical weapons) 168, 170, 174 neo-Gramscianism 69–72 neoconservatism 33 new liberalism 30, 36 NGOs (non-governmental organizations) 211, 377–8 N igeria 366 9/11 221 non-democratic states and human rights 269–70 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 211, 377–8 non-resistance 184–5 non-retrogression rule 339 normative theory 438 normative universalism 207–9 ‘North’ countries 364 nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons 168, 170, 174 see also biological weapons; chemical weapons; nuclear weapons nuclear weapons 116–17, 168–9, 169–70, 171–2, 174, 175, 177 Nussbaum, Martha 3, 48, 85–6, 300–301, 336, 473 OECD countries 367–8 488

Index The Prince (Machiavelli) 16–17 principle of nationality 396 prisoners of war 123–5 procedural justice 363 property rights 338 proportionality in warfare 171 prostitution 253 public law, three levels of 4 public/private dichotomy 234–6

regional cooperation and human rights 210 reiterative universalism 396 religion cosmopolitan dialogue 454–7 human rights 204 liberalism 447–78 pacifism 186–7 and reason 65 universalism 444 religious organizations and human rights 211–12 religious pluralism 446–8, 452–3 religious tolerance 450–54 religious universalism 447 remedial right theory of secession 403 republican government 4–5 republicanism cosmopolitan 469–70 Kant, Immanuel 50 Machiavelli, Niccolò 18 principles of 50–51 Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine 147–8, 158–9, 225 The Responsibility to Protect report 142–3 rights conflicts 338–9 democracy 265 ethics 83 language 334–5, 337, 339 revolution 203 rights-based approaches (RBAs) 333–4, 339 rights of man 203–4 see also human rights Rio D eclaration 387 Russell, Bertrand 187 Rwanda 141, 158, 222, 226, 227–8, 279

R2P (Responsibility to Protect doctrine) 147–8, 158–9, 225 radical cosmopolitanism 72–4 radical democracy 266–7 radiological weapons 176 raison d’état 16–17 rape in war 242–3 Rawls, John 5, 36–7, 189, 264, 269–70, 295, 302–3, 398 Rawlsian Interdependence 294–8 RBAs (rights-based approaches) 333–4, 339 realism classical texts 21–3 definitions 13 Hobbes, Thomas 19–21 as ideology 23–4 Machiavelli, Niccolò 16–18 origins of 13–14 Thucydides 15–16 universalism 445–6 reason 67–8 refugees Australia 317 camps 317–18 citizens’ rights 314–15 citizenship 319 identification of 315–18 international relations (IR) 318–19 League of Nations 310–11 repatriation 317–18 repelling of 313 United N ations 311–12 Universal D eclaration of Human Rights 313 regime change 126–31

San Joaquin valley, California 359 Saro-Wiwa, Ken 378 Seattle protests 437 secession 399, 401–3 Seeley, Robert John 34 self-determination 396, 397, 398, 399–401 self-government 399 Seneca 47 489

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns SWOT (strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats) 347

Serbia 142, 222 Shapiro, Michael J. 104, 108 Shell Oil 378 S ierra L eone 156, 158, 159–60, 278 Singer, Peter 298–300 sites of power 55 Sjoberg, Laura 88–9 social contract 49–50 social defence 195–6 social entrepreneurs 390 social justice and transitional justice 283–5 social ontology 84 social relations rights 84 socialism 36 Socrates 45–6 Solomon Islands 285 Somalia 137, 138, 158, 163 South Africa 157, 228, 282, 382 ‘South’ countries 364–5 sovereignty see state sovereignty Spinoza, Baruch 23 Srebrenica 142 stakeholder theory 379 state autonomy 400–401 state sovereignty cosmopolitanism 54, 404 human rights 21–2 human security 158–60 intervention 137, 140 poststructuralism 102 vertical dispersal 296–7 states concept of 163 democratic 361 elements of 56 interdependence 295–6, 297–8 Stoicism 3, 46–8 strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) 347 subaltern genocide 222–3 Sudan 144–8, 158–9, 226 Sullivan Principles 382 supreme emergency exemption 119 sustainable development 387–9 sweatshop labor 378

tactical right of workers 66 TBL (triple bottom line) 379 Tehlirian, Soghomon 227 terrorists 123–5 The Prince (Machiavelli) 16–17 A Theory of Justice (Rawls) 295 three-folding 389–90 Thucydides 2, 13–14, 15–16 Timor-Leste see East Timor TNCs (transnational corporations) see multinational corporations Tocqueville, Alexis de 31 Tolstoy, Leo 185–6, 188, 192–3 torture 123–5 totalitarianism critical theory 67 democracy 31–2 Hobbes, Thomas 23 liberalism 28, 35 Marxism 66 trade liberalization 437–8 tradition and human rights 205 transitional justice international collaboration 277–80 internationals 285–7 Iraq 278–9 social justice 283–5 structural violence 282 women 280, 286 transitional states and human rights 277 transnational corporations (TNCs) see multinational corporations tri-sector partnerships 389–90 triple bottom line (TBL) 379 Truman, Harry 116 Trust Fund for Human Security (UNTFHS) 152, 161 truth and reconciliation commissions 228, 281 Turner, Bryan 472–4

490

Index Sudan 144–8 Trust Fund for Human Security (UNTFHS) 152, 161 Universal D eclaration of Human Rights 201–2, 207–8, 212–13, 248–9, 261, 313 women’s rights 237–8 United S tates Climate Action Partnership 389 Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) 251, 256 Council on International Business (USCIB) 385 democracy 31 energy-related multinational corporations 388–9 environmental justice 358–61 General Accounting Office (GAO) 359 hazardous waste 358–61, 366, 368 immigration 297 Sudan 146–7 Vietnam 136–7 Universal D eclaration of Human Rights 201–2, 207–8, 212–13, 248–9, 261, 313 universal hospitality 52 universal legality 210 universalism cultural 203–6 diversity 269 historical 203–6 human rights 201–13 institutional 209–12 international human rights law 210 liberalism 208–9 meaning of 45 moral 444 normative 207–9 political 209–12 religion 444 religious pluralism 446–8 universality 73 Urabi Revolt 136 utilitarianism 36, 117–18, 298–300

see Universal D eclaration of Human Rights Uganda 158, 225, 228 UNCRC see Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) UNFCCC (Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)) 388 UNHCR (High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)) 311–12, 317–18 United Church of Christ 359, 361 United Kingdom 368 United N ations anti-war internationalism 191 collective security 55, 143, 159 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of D iscrimination Against Women (CED AW) 238–9 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 217–18, 227 Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) 247, 250–51, 257–8, 277 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees 311–13 D eclaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (D EVAW) 239–41 D eclaration on the Rights of the Child 249 democratic deliberation 54 D epartment of Peacekeeping Operations (D PKO) 142 Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 388 Global Compact 382–3 High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 311–12, 317–18 Human Rights Council 385 Norms (on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and other Business Entities Regarding Human Rights) 384–6 refugees 311–12 Security Council 143, 159 Social Commission 248–9 UDHR

veil of ignorance 295 491

Et h ic s and Int er nat io nal Rel at io ns Vienna D eclaration and Program of Action 238 Vietnam 136–7 violence democracy 263 human security 156–7 the state 191 against women 83–4 virtù 18 Vitoria, Francisco de 122, 135

weapons of mass destruction (WMD ) 167–80 civilian deaths 173 definition 175–6 deterrence 173–4 expected destructiveness 170 indiscriminateness 173–4 welfare state 30, 57 welfare trap 430 West Harlem, New York 359 Wheeler, Nicholas 140, 225 WMD see weapons of mass destruction women capabilities approach to 85 care 92 development 85 human rights 83–5, 204, 233–44 power relations between 90 transitional justice 280, 286 voice of 89, 90 women’s rights 83–5, 237–8, 272 World Business Council for Sustainable D evelopment (WBCSD ) 387–8 world citizenship 44, 45–9, 59 World Trade Organization (WTO) 437–8

WAD see weapons of assured destruction Waldron, Jeremy 265, 474 Walzer, Michael 37, 115–17, 119–20, 129–30, 141, 302, 396, 474 war see also just war theory democracy 264 empathy 89 ethics 99–100 feminist ethics 92 Hobbes, Thomas 19–20 liberalism 34–5 normative ethics 4 preventive 119–20 rape in 242–3 war crimes 275 war on terror 99 war tribunals 227 Warren County, North Carollina 358–9 WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable D evelopment) 387–8 weapons of assured destruction (WAD ) 177–80 weapons of indiscriminate destruction (WID ) 171–2, 179–80

xenophobia 48 Young Hegelianism 65 youth gang violence 156–7 Zaïre 227 Zeno of Citium 46

492