We have the power of choice over nuclear weapons. But we do not feel our power. Instead, we feel their power. They are larger than life. They loom over us, seemingly beyond our control, shrouded in myth and dark mystery. Because of their power and our feeling that nuclear weapons are unique, we believe that these weapons require a special set of moral rules, specially tuned to the separate world where nuclear weapons dwell.

The European community holds a range of contradictory, changing, and evolving views of the United States and the Soviet Union. Hassner notes that the United States is seen both as an individualistic agent with a guilty conscience that intervenes irresponsibly and hypocritically, and as a model for resistance to oppression. The Soviet Union is also viewed antithetically, both condemned for totalitarianism and praised as more humanistic than the United States. Hassner sees these oppositions as reflecting the profound differences between the superpowers and indicating the challenge the United States and the Soviet Union face in establishing a common ethics.

The introductory piece attempts to set forth as objectively as possible the economic legacy of the Reagan Administration, with emphasis on its international aspects, and thereby to provide the background for the other articles. Gilpin charts the shift in the 1980s from a supply-side, laissez-faire style policy to one that acknowledges a need for cooperation between the United States and its economic partners. While this has been a responsible and productive change, it has also generated ambiguity as to what the U.S. stance on economic international activity should be.

The fundamental question is whether the non-Western world is capable of developing our form of liberal democratic self-government, despite our differences in tradition and culture. The author taps on several critical differences of interpretation of what we consider to be integral to our form of government, such as John Locke's concept of “civil society”; the idea of “pluralism”; and the concept of “inherent human rights” counsel, which have distinctly different meanings in the West compared to those of Central and Eastern Europe. Interestingly, the differences are indicative of the profound cultural and historic differences of the societies engaged in the interpretation and adaption of these ideas. The author is optimistic in the regard of democracy “traveling,” provided that individuals recognize their own identity within the democratic society and acquire practice in exercising their freedoms. In this way, not only will democracy flourish under previously dictatorial regimes, but will continue to persist where it is already established.

In this essay Seth argues that it is not the case that international relations theory has suffered because domestic theory has prospered, but rather that both bear the marks of a signal failure to grasp the implications of, and to theorize adequately about, nationalism. She argues further that this failure is partly rooted in the phenomenon of nationalism itself, for it encapsulates many of the tensions and contradictions of modern thought. Finally, she suggests that the transformation of the international system from a system of states to a system of nation-states has had profound consequences for international relations, consequences not fully grasped in international relations theory.

This article examines the present bifurcation of policy-making into domestic and foreign components, and urges a theoretical effort aimed at unifying national policy by integrating its various components. Beyond such an urging, the article aims to show that the act of making policy invariably involves decisions about events that take place both within and outside of a nation. This is not a claim for the superiority of any one segment of policy making. What is important or trivial is determined within a means-ends continuum. In breaking down artificial barriers inherited from nationalist models, it is possible to institutionalize a policy process that takes into account “shrinkage” of the world that is a direct consequence of new information technologies, and at the same time, incorporates the wisdom of classical ethical theories on the nature of power.

The three books reviewed in this essay, Morality Among Nations: An Evolutionary View (Mary Maxwell), Righteous Realists: Political Realism, Responsible Power, and American Culture in the Nuclear Age (Joel H. Rosenthal), and Securing Europe (Richard H. Ullman), in some sense represent a reaction to Reagan's ideological policies. Maxwell's book appeals to the sociobiological nature of international morality. Rosenthal's book invites the reader to consider the valid view of the realist model as a venue toward integration of morals with decision making in international relations. Ullman's main premise is that the disintegration of the Soviet empire and reunification of Germany gave a strong impetus for the European states to seek a common ground in all areas through cooperation, particularly on security issues.

It might seem an American Dream come true: About 100 Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors, ten at a time, are managing five laboratories stocked with “totally state-of-the-art equipment” in a gleaming new tower on the National University of Singapore campus. As the New York Times reports, the campus houses the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology and other projects, involving “world-class universities from Britain, China, France, Germany, Israel and Switzerland.” The MIT professors and their forty PhD and postdoctoral researchers are designing “myriad innovations”: driverless cars that would respond to “killer app” sensors throughout Singapore; stingray-like robots that will collect ocean-bottom data to fight noxious algae; and technologies that will track infectious diseases, energy consumption, and other movements in this tightly run, wealthy city-state of 5.4 million people.

Thinking about international affairs has oscillated between idealism and realism throughout the modern period. Moralists continue to search for a way to combine what is reasonable in each in an ethically defensible middle between those extremes. Such efforts often yield a soft version of political realism: an ethics of compromise between moral ideals and real-world interests. But this resolution fails to escape an awkward dichotomy between “morality” and “reality,” as if moral considerations were not real and interests never illusory. It also rests on a simplistic conception of politics. Politics is distinguished from other activities in being concerned with obligations prescribed and enforced within a legal order, and those who make political decisions cannot ignore these obligations. Political decision-making must therefore take account of law, which is distinct from both morality and interest. Law may have its ultimate justification in moral principle, but it provides reasons for acting that are distinct from moral reasons. This is true of law at any level, including international law. Law also has material as well as normative force as part of the world in which decisions are made. A more nuanced middle-ground ethics, then, would take account of law as making demands of its own. If we bring law into the picture, we discover limits to action that are grounded on neither morality nor interest.

The message of Michael Ignatieff's reflections on reimagining a global ethic is a comforting one for political philosophers. It is vital, he writes, for philosophers to keep doing what they have been doing: addressing the injustices of globalization from a perspective of strict impartiality that treats every human being as the object of equal moral concern. Philosophers should continue to elaborate this “one world” perspective against those partial perspectives arising from the claims of one's particular country or particular religious faith. But their aim should not be to replace the one with the other, but to prompt an ongoing critical dialogue in which more particularistic doctrines of country or faith are called to justify themselves before the one-world ethic's impartial standards—thus prompting the kind of critical self-reflection that is essential to moral change. And in so doing, the one-world ethic cannot be uncritical of itself, for there are different ways of conceiving a global ethic, each of which must answer to the others.

In his article “Carbon Emissions, Stratospheric Aerosol Injection, and Unintended Harms,” Christopher J. Preston compares the culpability of carbon emitters versus that of geoengineers deploying stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). This comparison relies on a parallel between carbon emitters and SAI deployers that requires both to be agents. However, both are not. While the harms of geoengineering will be caused by culpable agents acting intentionally, the harms connected to climate change emerge out of the uncoordinated actions of billions of people. Taken as a large group, carbon emitters cause harm but do not constitute an agent. Taken individually, carbon emitters are agents but do not cause the harms of climate change. As a result, the parallel collapses, and Preston's “surprising” conclusion is one that he is not entitled to reach.