Among the many disruptions caused by artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital technologies (including automation, cyberwarfare, surveillance, loss of privacy, fake news, infrastructure vulnerability), the effects on development pathways are likely to be significant and complex. AI will enable low-income countries to leapfrog in several sectors, including e-governance, e-finance, e-health, and e-education. Yet AI will also lead to automation, reducing the demand for labor, especially unskilled labor. Labor-intensive sectors such as apparel will provide fewer jobs, and lower export earnings. Development strategies will need to adjust accordingly.

In recent years, American military forces have been deployed in an ever-expanding array of humanitarian, peacekeeping, peacemaking, and nation-building operations. In practice American forces have often been reluctantly committed, and almost always with an extreme emphasis on force-protection and the avoidance of American casualties. Often this issue is discussed in the framework of perceived political constraints on American use of the military – in terms of how many casualties the American public will accept in exchange for a given mission. Beneath the level of the political constraints on American leaders, there lies a deeper tension having to do with the implicit moral contract between the United States and its military personnel. Although military personnel are required to follow all legal orders, morally the traditional contract between soldier and state rests on shared assumptions about the purposes for which national militaries will and will not be used.

As of the first week of February 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in over two million people dead across the globe. This essay argues that in order to fully understand the politics arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to focus on the individual and collective experiences of death, loss, and grief. While the emerging scholarly discourse on the pandemic, particularly in political science and international relations, typically considers death only in terms of its effects on formal state-level politics and as a policy objective for mitigation, we argue that focusing on the particularities of the experience of death resulting from COVID-19 can help us fully understand the ways in which the pandemic is reordering our worlds. Examining the ambiguous sociopolitical meaning of death by COVID-19 can provide broader analytical comparisons with other mass death events. Ultimately, the essay argues that centering the impact of the pandemic on the experience of death and loss directly poses the question of how politics should value human lives in the post-pandemic world, helping us better formulate the normative questions necessary for a more ethical future.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were established following the UN Millennium Declaration, which was approved by the UN General Assembly in September 2000. Described by some as the “world's biggest promise,” they set out a series of time-bound targets to be achieved by the international community by 2015, including a halving of extreme poverty, a two-third reduction in child mortality, a three-quarter reduction in maternal mortality, and universal primary education. The MDGs were, however, often criticized for having a “blind spot” with regard to inequality and social injustice. Worse, they may even have contributed to entrenched inequalities through perverse incentives. As some have argued, in order to achieve progress toward the MDG targets at the national level, governments focused their attention on the “easy to reach” populations and ignored more marginalized, vulnerable groups. The aim of this essay is to examine the extent to which this widespread criticism has been successfully addressed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), approved by the UN General Assembly in September 2015.

The increasingly widespread and energetic engagement with the idea of just war over the last fifty years of thinking on morality and armed conflict—especially in English-speaking countries—presents a striking contrast to the previous several centuries, going back to the early 1600s, in which thinkers addressing moral issues related to war did so without reference to the just war idea.

Elshtain presents a case for the primacy of politics if one would argue persuasively about international justice. Without political stability, all attempts to assist developing states, or to sustain persons caught in the chaos of “failed states,” must fail. A concept of justice lies at the heart of this discussion and revolves around the fundamental questions of to whom justice is owed and in what justice consists.

Have we any obligations beyond our own borders? If so, what form do these take? These questions are addressed by developing a concept of comparative justice indebted to the just war tradition and tying it to the equal moral regard of persons. This leads, in turn, to two further difficulties. First, what does it mean to make a claim under the equal regard norm? Just war criteria posit certain universal claims in a political universe in which particular bodies politic either respond, or do not, to such claims in light of their own principles and interests. The article develops a citizenship model for cases of humanitarian intervention, rejecting any and all approaches that involve an asymmetrical valuing of human life.

Second, who can be called upon to use coercive force in behalf of justice? Elshtain argues that all states have a stake in creating and sustaining an international system of equal regard. But, at present, there is no universal body that can be turned to with any confidence in situations of catastrophic violence, like ethnic cleansing. UN Peacekeepers are effective only after a measure of order is restored. As a result the state, or states, with the greatest capability to project power bears the lion's sharer of responsibility for enforcing an equal regard norm. Elshtain acknowledges the difficulties of articulating a strong universal justice claim while assigning a particular state, or states, and their people a disproportionate enforcement burden. But that best describes the present moment and it is better by far that those with power deploy that power within a framework of principles and constraints rather than solely along the lines of classic realpolitik.

This paper discusses obligations of international distributive justice-specifically, obligations rich countries have to transfer resources to poor countries. It argues that the major seven OECD countries each have an obligation to transfer at least one percent of their GDP to developing countries.

The strategy of the paper is to defend this position without having to resolve the many debates that attend questions of international distributive justice. In this respect, it belongs to the neglected category of nonideal theory. The key to the strategy is to show that a significant amount of good would be accomplished by a one percent transfer, despite the fact that one percent is quite a small amount.

To make this showing, the paper takes health as a fundamental measure of individual well-being and examines the improvement in life expectancy that would likely result from devoting the one percent transfer to the major determinants of health. It adduces data indicating that substantial progress towards raising life expectancy in developing countries to the global average of 64.5 years can be expected from expenditures of $125 per capita, divided between health care, education, and basic nutrition and income support. A one percent transfer from the major seven is enough to cover expenditures on that scale for the poorest fifth of the world's population.

This article addresses the question what—if anything—we can and should expect from the practice of international criminal justice. It argues that neither retributive nor purely consequentialist, deterrence-based justifications give sufficient guidance as to what international criminal courts should aim to achieve. Instead, the legal theory of expressivism provides a more viable (but not unproblematic) guide. Contrary to other expressivist views, this article argues for the importance of the trial, not just the punishment, as a form of expressivist messaging. Specifically, we emphasize the communicative aspect of the judicial process. The final section, acknowledging the limited success of international criminal justice so far in terms of fulfilling its expressivist potential, diagnoses the main obstacles to, and opportunities for, expressivist messaging in the contemporary practice of international criminal justice.

The language of human rights is increasingly being advocated as a framework for policy dialogue. To make this feasible, indicators must be developed that help to hold the state accountable for its policies, that help to guide and improve policy, and that are sensitive to local contexts without sacrificing the commitment to the universality of rights. Can it be done?

This article examines ongoing attempts to devise indicators and argues that they are not based in a sufficiently clear conceptual framework. It argues for greater intelligibility in devising indicators concerning what they should be assessing, how to reflect the universalism of rights across different contexts, and how to weigh the conflicts of interest that characterize the public policy decision-making process.

Nonintervention has been a particularly important and occasionally disturbing principle for liberal scholars, such as John Stuart Mill and Michael Walzer, who share a commitment to basic and universal human rights. On the one hand, liberals have provided some of the strongest reasons to abide by a strict form of the nonintervention doctrine. It was only with the security of national borders that peoples could work out the capacity to govern themselves as free citizens. On the other hand, those very same principles of universal human dignity when applied in different contexts have provided justifications for overriding or disregarding the principle of nonintervention.

In explaining this dual logic I present an interpretive summary of s'Mill famous argument against and for intervention, presented in his “A Few Words on Non-Intervention” (1859), that illustrates what makes Mill's “few words” both so attractive and alarming to us. We should be drawn to Mill's arguments because he is among the first to address the conundrums of modern intervention. The modern conscience tries simultaneously to adhere to three contradictory principles: first, the cosmopolitan, humanitarian commitment to assistance, irrespective of international borders; second, respect for the significance of communitarian, national self-determination; and, third, accommodation to the reality of international anarchy, which puts a premium on self-help national security. I stress, more than has been conventional, the consequentialist character of the ethics of both nonintervention and intervention.

Comparing Mill's “Non-Intervention” and Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars (1977) links two classic statements on just wars of intervention. I conclude that interventionist arguments should go beyond the three paradigmatic cases Walzer explores in Just and Unjust Wars. But while they can draw on Mill's “Non-Intervention,” they need to offer a more convincing set of criteria for when such interventions are likely to do more good than harm

The international rule of law is often seen as a centerpiece of the modern international order. It is routinely reaffirmed by governments, international organizations, scholars, and activists, who credit it with reducing the recourse to war, preserving human rights, and constraining (albeit imperfectly) the pursuit of state self-interests. It is commonly seen as supplanting coercion and power politics with a framework of mutual interests that is cemented by state consent.

The workings of global finance are like that part of the iceberg beneath the waterline – vast, unseen and, for many, unknown. The interaction of global finance with human rights is especially opaque. The globalization of each phenomenon has occurred very largely independently of the other. Even the recent surge in interest in the global economy and human rights has been heavily focused on the real economy and on what (non-banking) corporations do and how they behave. The particular dimension of interactions between finance and human rights has, by and large, been a blank space. In this article we seek to bridge the gap in understanding, perspective, and practice between the two fields by investigating actual and potential linkages in respect of four specific features of global finance – two financial products: bonds and derivatives; and two financial processes: risk management and procyclicality. These have been chosen as an illustrative sample of the complex and diverse ways in which the global financial system interacts with human rights. Although these products and processes played an important role in the recent global financial crisis, and although the interface between global finance and human rights is extensive, they have not so far featured on the human rights agenda or been the subject of detailed human rights critique. As such they provide an overview of the types of human rights issues in the financial sector that have so far been hidden from view. The paper therefore constructs an argument as to why the bridging of the gap is important and provides pointers as to how it can be done.

In recent years, the target of reaching “net zero” emissions by 2050 has come to the forefront of global climate politics. Net zero would see carbon emissions matched by carbon removals and should allow the planet to avoid dangerous climate change. But the recent prominence of this goal should not distract from the fact that there are many possible versions of net zero. Each of them will have different climate justice implications, and some of them could have very negative consequences for the world's poor. This article demonstrates the many ambiguities of net zero, and argues in favor of a net zero strategy in which those who can reasonably bear the burden adopt early and aggressive mitigation policies. We also argue for a net zero strategy in which countries place the lion's share of their faith in known emissions reduction approaches, rather than being heavily reliant on as-yet-unproven “negative emissions techniques.” Our overarching goal is to put net zero in its place, by providing a clear-sighted view of what net zero will achieve, and where the “net” in net zero needs to be tightened further if the world is to achieve climate justice.

In recent years, there have been concerted efforts to ensure that the different components of the international response to crisis-affected countries, whether conducted under the banner of the United Nations or not, are integrated in pursuit of a stated goal of comprehensive, durable, and just resolution of conflict. This includes a drive to purposefully make humanitarian assistance to victims, one of the principal forms of outside involvement in crisis situations, supportive of the “international community's” political ambition. The implication of the coherence agenda is that meeting lifesaving needs is too limited in scope, and that the principles of impartiality, neutrality, and independence that have typically characterized humanitarian action should be set aside in order to harness aid to the “higher” goals of peace, security, and development.

Intervention often violates both respect for state sovereignty and the right to self-determination. McMahan focuses on the latter ethical dimension rather than the former political and legal one, although his claims have important implications for issues of state sovereignty. He challenges the common assumption that respect for self-determination requires an almost exceptionless doctrine of nonintervention by first defining the notions of “intervention” and “self-determination,” and then analyzing Walzer's doctrine of nonintervention. The recognition that there are different ideals of self-determination results in a less rigid and more permissive doctrine of nonintervention.

The end of the Cold War and the growth of economic, political, and informational globalization are challenging our traditional definitions of self. Franck displays the complexity and growing subjectiveness of identity by providing a detailed lexicon of identity, including definitions of nation, state, tribe, and ethnicity. He argues that recent appeals to nationalism based on a common sociocultural, geographic, and linguistic heritage should be seen as reactions against the broadening communities of trade, information, and power. However, Franck asserts that anomie and xenophobia can be countered by giving substatal ethnicities, minorities, and political parties a voice and a vote in international forums.

The liberal international order is being challenged today by populism and unilateralism. Though it has been resilient in the past, the current challenges from within the order are unprecedented. Without being too pessimistic, I expect the LIO will survive but retract to its original core states in North America, Europe, and Northeast Asia, shedding some of its universal pretensions. States that remain within the liberal order, in turn, will compete with an alternative Chinese-led international hierarchy built around all or part of the current Belt and Road Initiative countries. While international institutions can facilitate cooperation, they do not bridge this emerging divide sufficiently to forestall conflict and, in any event, will not be sufficiently robust to prevent a new cold war. As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this brief essay sketches this argument and concludes with some possible ways of moderating future conflicts.

It is unlikely that George W. Bush feels constrained by international law when deciding whether to use military force abroad. Nevertheless, many of the United States' allies are reluctant to cooperate with and participate in military actions that cannot reasonably be justified under international law. And supportive allies, while perhaps not strictly necessary to the United States in its recent and foreseeable military campaigns, do make the military option easier to pursue. A war against Iraq would be difficult without access to bases and airspace in countries as diverse as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Canada. For this reason, at least, it would seem to be worth the president's while to adhere to international law where possible and, where this is not possible, to seek to change the rules.

What lessons should policy makers, particularly those at United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York and those of the Clinton administration in Washington, be taking away from the military, humanitarian, and diplomatic dilemmas in the former Yugoslavia? Specifically, what have we learned about moral choice as it pertains to recent UN activities? What in fact are the moral choices, and how might they be framed by those in power to make decisions?