Ethics for a Shrinking World

237 Pages·1990·23.531 MB·English

by  Gerard Elfstrom (auth.)

ETHICS FOR A SHRINKING WORLD
Also by Gerard Elfstrom
MILITARY ETHICS (with N. Fotion)
Ethics for a
Shrinking World
Gerard Elfstrom
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Auburn University, Alabama
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-20502-8 ISBN 978-1-349-20500-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20500-4
© Gerard Elfstrom, 1990
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990978-0-333-49056-3
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc.,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1990
ISBN 978-0-312-03204-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Elfstrom, G. (Gerard)
Ethics for a shrinking world/Gerard Elfstrom.
p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-312-03204-3: $39.95 (est.)
1. International relations-Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title.
JX1255.E44 1990
172'4-dc20 89-33433
CIP
Contents
Introduction 1
1 Issues and Challenges 3
Special Features and Challenges of the Ethics of
International Relations 5
Normative Theory 12
Alternatives to Utilitarianism 20
Application 24
2 Violence in International Relations 41
Violence as a Means 43
Warfare 47
Projection of Power 56
Discrete Violence 65
Arms Control 70
Control of Discrete Political Violence 76
3 Sovereignty 86
The Nature of Sovereignty 90
Legitimacy 92
Deposing Governments 106
Intervention 120
Claims to Sovereignty 126
4 National Boundaries 132
The Ties of Citizenship 134
National Identity 139
Emigration/Immigration 143
International Distributive Justice 155
Conclusion: Present and Future Prospects 172
Notes 190
Bibliography 215
Index 226
v
Introduction
Well-intentioned failure often provides the best occasion for moral
reflection and the most fertile source of moral insight. This work was
inspired by such a failure, that of the American President, Jimmy
Carter. He wished to establish a foreign policy based on even-handed
concern for the moral rights of all humanity. For the citizen, the
prospect of a great power setting aside its customary hypocrisy
and attempting a policy of genuine moral sensitivity was cause for
elation. For the philosopher, the theoretical difficulties of this goal
offered intriguing possibilities for reflection. How, for example, can
one nation justify intervention in the domestic affairs of another?
What is the difference between strictly domestic problems, such as
corruption in government, and issues which demand international
attention, such as genocide? Or are there any genuine principles
of international distributive justice?
These and other issues gave theoretical exercise, but Carter's
program came to grief for other reasons. It floundered on the
barrier of domestic politics and also on practical difficulties which
arose, for instance, when concerns of national security collided with
those of human rights, as occurred in the Philippines and South
Korea. However, the most basic problems were those of how to go
about institutionalizing moral sensitivity and making it a continually
effective influence on policy.
Carter's idea, as so many others in his tenure, sprang full blown
from his brow. In good engineer's fashion, he analyzed the issue,
worked out his response, then attempted to impose it on an unwilling
and bewildered constituency. At this stage his plans quickly bogged
down. This pattern is a widely recognized feature of Carter's style as
President. But what is not so well appreciated is that philosophers and
theoreticians often reproduce his engineer's approach. They believe it
sufficient to examine problems in a vacuum, pronounce one course of
action or another correct, and then castigate those who fail to heed
their prescriptions. The mistake lies in a failure to examine the
context in which action must occur. Standards of conduct which are
feasible in an established society with common values and effective
means of enforcement cannot be directly applied to the international
arena. Ethical analysis of international relations must take its special
conditions into account if it is to avoid futility and irrelevancy.
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2 Ethics for a Shrinking World
The international conditions which confirm the difficulty of this
project also underscore its necessity. The breakdown of European
colonial empires and the increasing impotence of the great powers
to mold international affairs have resulted in an unruly world which
contains a large number of small, youthful nations with little
experience in self-government and less in international affairs.
These nations, often poor and frequently squabbling, are the scene
of enormous human suffering resulting from natural causes, human
incompetence, or old-fashioned greed and viciousness. The great
powers themselves contribute in various ways to human anguish, not
least by maintaining the threat of nuclear war. Their enormous power
and wide ranging interests seem to have dulled their moral sensitivity
rather than the reverse. Immense resources have allowed them to
ignore the thinking of others and the genuine condition of the world,
as well as the real limitations of their own power - luxuries which
other nations cannot afford. Yet part of the thesis of this work is
that these same conditions not only allow morally responsible action
but provide grounds for the hope that a genuine moral culture can
be achieved, one with shared principles and institutions which would
nurture greater moral rigor and more widespread responsibility. The
challenge and the opportunity which the current situation provides
are the touchstones of the ideas developed here.
Moral problems which arise on the international level can be
usefully sorted as concerning the use of violence in international
affairs, the limitations of sovereignty of individual governments,
and the moral significance of national borders. In view of this, a
lengthy chapter is devoted to a sampling of the problems of each
sort. Given the concern of this work for the concrete situation in
which moral action occurs, the concluding chapter is devoted to an
examination of what factors currently undermine international moral
sensitivity, how these can be overcome, and how we may work to
shape institutions so that a more ambitious ethic can be expected in
the future.
The first order of business, however, must be an examination
of the characteristics and problems of the ethics of international
relations, laying out the normative principles which will guide the
analyses of this work, and illustrating the ways in which they must
be applied to concrete issues. This is the project of Chapter 1.
1 Issues and Challenges
The world is closing in. Famine, genocide, oppression and terrorism
are as near as the evening news, and jet transport makes them
physically close as well. The current travels in both directions.
Comfortable Westerners can easily devise ways to make money in
far corners - or destroy them in a twinkling. The forces that bring
the world closer also magnify the potential for doing good and doing
ill. In the past it was easy to remain ignorant of distant suffering and
even easier to remain indifferent to it. Yet, though the earth now
touches more closely, old ideas of moral responsibility and moral
accountability remain.
It is widely recognized that pictures, whether in magazines or on
television, are better able to touch human feeling than any number
of words. Pictures of starving children or dazed refugees make
human suffering clear and immediate, and are capable of prompting
vague feelings of a moral responsibility to act,! But people, whether
ordinary citizens, politicians or theoreticians, are generally uncertain
of how to respond to the twinges and starts of conscience prompted
by the latest electronic marvels. Is it the responsibility of individuals
to give assistance in these cases of human need, of governments,
of both? Should assistance extend to welcoming refugees into one's
homeland? But don't citizens have the prior obligation to attend to
the needy already among them? And what about violations of human
rights by governments or individuals? Who has a responsibility to
remedy those? Or should the sovereignty of foreign guvernments
always be inviolate? Many claim that these twinges should be ignored,
that moral responsibilities end at national borders, and that there is
no place for moral constraint in the international arena.
The task of this work is to begin to lay such doubts and
uncertainties to rest by showing what an ethics of international
relations should look like and by exploring the conditions under
which it is feasible. Challenges come from two directions, from
skeptics who doubt that any such ethics is possible and from those
moralists who insist on an ethics founded only on the strictest
standards of moral accountability.2 The danger of the skeptics is
obvious, but the stringent moralists pose a more subtle threat, that
of undercutting the feasibility and credibility of international ethics
by ignoring its special constraints. Too often moralists proceed as
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4 Ethics for a Shrinking World
though the problems of human life are met in a Kantian kingdom
of selfless, rational deliberators. The world and its actors are not
like that, and a morality which is to make a difference must take
note of the contrast. This point applies both to the ethics of personal
relations and to the ethics of international relations. However, the
lapse is less important on the personal level. In part this is because
iridividual actors have greater control over their personal decisions
than when they function as part of an institution. Also, human
societies contain structures and pressures which both define and
encourage morally responsible conduct but which are absent on
the international level. The Kantian perspective, while flawed,
works better and is more plausible when focused on problems of
individual life. It is less satisfactory when the focus is on individuals
operating within institutions or on relations between the institutions
themselves.
Oddly, these two challenges are rooted in a common misconcep
tion. They fail to recognize that the way in which moral issues arise on
the international level, and the way in which they must be met, differ
from problems of individual relations. Because the ethics of personal
relations is the source of preconceptions of what a genuine ethics must
be like, people are disoriented when they face moral difficulties which
diverge from this model. Both skeptics and moralists suffer from this
disorientation, with the former insisting that the differences of the
two levels rule out any ethics at all, while the latter respond that an
international ethics must be exactly like personal ethics.
Skeptics are fond of arguing that the international arena closely
resembles a Hobbesian state of nature.3 They are quick to draw
the conclusion that in such conditions none but the foolhardy would
subject themselves to moral restraint. Moralists all too often agree
with this inference and are then obliged to attack the premise. That
is, they must devise heroic arguments in the attempt to show that,
appearance to the contrary, the international arena is an essentially
civil place. The root of their heroics is the view, shared with skeptics,
that all morality must closely resemble the paradigm set by the moral
relations of individual human beings.
These misconceptions are best allayed by careful examination of
the ways in which an ethics of international relations must diverge
from ethics on the personal level. These differences require changes
in thinking about the way in which ethics should function. Once
they are understood, however, a serviceable and humane ethics
of international relations is entirely feasible. It is not sufficient to