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Can We Think Systematically About Ethics and Statecraft?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

David A. Welch
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Should United Nations forces step up their efforts to pacify Mogadishu or should they pull out of Somalia altogether? Does the international community have the right (or the obligation) to force Haiti's military rulers to relinquish their grip on power, and how much suffering should we he willing to inflict upon that country's already impoverished people to accomplish that goal? Should the outside world intervene militarily to stop the carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Angola, Burundi, or Nagorno-Karabakh? If so, who should intervene? How?

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Articles
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Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 8 , March 1994 , pp. 23 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1994

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References

1 David R. Mapel and Terry Nardin, “Convergence and Divergence in International Ethics,” in Terry Nardin and David R. Mapel, eds., Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 318.

2 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge MA: Belknap, 1971). 46–47.

3 Readers familiar with Rawls will note that this rather oversimplifies his own position. Rawls's notion of reflective equilibrium requires a two-way adjustment between principles and judgments, such that we discard peripheral judgments inconsistent with our most basic fundamental intuitive ideas even as we simultaneously adjust our principles to accommodate our considered moral judgments. See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 17–22; and “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 7 (Spring 1987), 2–5Google Scholar.

4 The best and most comprehensive survey of Western traditions is Nardin and Mapel, Traditions of International Ethics, which examines, inter alia, the natural law tradition, deontological traditions, utilitarianism, liberalism, contractarianism, Marxism, and the Christian tradition. At present there is no analogous survey of non-Western traditions, although we are beginning to see some fascinating analyses of non-Western approaches to specific moral issues (e.g., Hashmi, Sohail H., “Is There an Islamic Ethic of Humanitarian Intervention?” Ethics & International Affairs 7 (1993), 55–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

5 Consider, for example, two particularly noteworthy analyses of the morality of nuclear deterrence from within competing ethical traditions: National Conference of Catholic Bishops, “The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response,” Origins 13 (May 19, 1983)Google Scholar; and Douglas Lackey, Moral Principles and Nuclear Weapons (Totowa NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1984). It is interesting to note that these analyses were controversial at the time of publication not solely because critics challenged their approaches, but also (and in the latter case, primarily) because of the empirical claims they made. For further discussion, see, e.g., James V. Schall, S.J., ed., Bishops' Pastoral Letters (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984); Ethics 95 (April 1985) (special issue on ethics and nuclear deterrence); and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Nuclear Ethics (New York: Free Press, 1986).

6 Mary Maxwell, Morality Among Nations: An Evolutionary View (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990); Duncker, Karl, “Ethical Relativity? (An Enquiry into the Psychology of Ethics),” Mind 48 (new series) (January 1939), 39–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Melvin J. Lerner and Sally C. Lerner, eds., The Justice Motive in Social Behavior: Adapting to Times of Scarcity and Change (New York: Plenum Press, 1981); and Roger D. Masters and Margaret Gruter, eds., The Sense of Justice: Biological Foundations of Law, Sage Focus Editions 136 (Newbury Park CA: Sage, 1992).

7 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 580–81.

8 The problem of dissent is particularly difficult for a Kantian analysis. The categorical imperative provides a formal test ostensibly valid for all moral agents but dues not require the actual assent of other agents. Byassumption, any moral agent would assent to the conclusion reached by anyone who reasons correctly in terms of the categorical imperative. Kant provides no method of “further justification” to which 1 allude above. Similarly, a liberalism that assigns a high value to individual moral autonomy has great difficulty justifying measures to enforce liberal practices in illiberal cultures. For further discussion, see Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community ami Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1989), and Melissa S. Williams. “Group inequality and the Public Culture of Justice.” in Judith Baker, ed. Group Rights, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994).

9 J. P. Stern, Hitler: The Führer and the People (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975). Cf. Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, abr. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 216, 487, who insists that Hitler was fundamentally amoral, suggesting that it would have been impossible for Hitler to display fidelity to his own moral principles.

10 See Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983).

11 In addition. as I argue in Justice and the Genesis of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1993), parochial moral standards contribute significantly to international conflict.

12 For further discussion, see Welch, Justice and the Genesis of War, chap. 7.

13 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. Oskar Piest (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1957) 6; Terry Nardin, Law, Morality, and the Relations of States (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press 1983) 60.

14 The view of conventionalism I employ here is distinguished from the ethical tradition of contractarianism in regarding actual agreements as the basis for making judgments of right and obligation, not hypothetical agreements. It rests upon no particular metaphysical foundation or doctrine of rational choice, and is weaker in its claims about obligations because, on a conventionalist view, obligation ceases when consent is withdrawn. Cf. David R. Mapel, “The Contractarian Tradition and International Ethics,” in Nardin and Mapel, Traditions, 180–200. For conventionalism to bring stability and order to ethical judgment in international affairs, it is vital that states do not enter and leave agreements frequently or whimsically, and that people internalize the norms to which they give their assent so that those norms, over time, become part of the corpus of their ordinary moral convictions. I make a few further remarks on this score below.

15 John Mueller argues that it is possible to discern broad patterns of moral progress in international affairs and invokes the example of slavery to make his point. See his Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York: Basic Books, 1989).

16 In the now-classic formulation, Stephen Krasner defines a regime as a set of “implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given area of international relations.” Stephen D. Krasner, “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables,” in Krasner, ed. International Regimes (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 2.

17 Ibid., emphasis added. Regimes appear to have had a salutary effect on the level of international cooperation in their respective domains. Robert Keohane writes, “[R]egimes create a more favorable institutional environment for cooperation than would otherwise exist…. Such regimes are important not because they constitute centralized quasi-governments, but because they can facilitate agreements, and decentralized enforcement of agreements, among governments. They enhance the likelihood of cooperation by reducing the costs of making transactions that are consistent with the principles of the regime. They create the conditions for orderly multilateral negotiations, legitimate and delegitimate different types of state action, and facilitate linkages among issues within regimes and between regimes. They increase the symmetry and improve the quality of the information that governments receive. By clustering issues together in the same forums over a long period of time, they help to bring governments into continuing interaction with one another, reducing incentives to cheat and enhancing the value of reputation. By establishing legitimate standards of behavior for states to follow and by providing ways to monitor compliance, they create the basis for decentralized enforcement founded on the principle of reciprocity.” Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 244–45.

18 According to Hume's moral psychology, it is precisely the internalization of rules of prudence that gives rise to moral commitments in the first place. Treatise of Human Nature, Ill. II, §I; in Henry D. Aiken, ed., Hume's Moral and Political Philosophy (New York: Hafner Press. 1948), 49–69.

19 Durkheim suggested that social norms have three defining characteristics: regularity of behavior, the sense that it is obligatory, and the support of social sanctions. But most people “obey” norms not out of fear of sanctions but because of internal motivation. See Robert T. Hail. Emile Durkheim: Ethics and the Sociology of Morals (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987). 48, 54.

20 Pluralistic security communities are groups of states in which even the latent threat of war plays no role whatsoever in their mutual relations. Karl W. Deutsch, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957).