International Ethics

A Critical Introduction

Richard Shapcott

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745657431
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Is it is justifiable to make any basic moral distinction between 'insiders and outsiders'? Do we have substantive duties of 'justice' to all human beings or merely Humanitarian duties of aid and assistance? These are two of the most crucial questions confronting world politics and the field of international ethics today.

International Ethics: A Critical Introduction provides an engaging and accessible introduction to these foundational questions. In a cogent and carefully argued analysis, Richard Shapcott critically examines the theories of cosmopolitanism, communitarianism, realism and pluralism and scrutinises their approaches to the various obligations which members of 'bounded' communities, primarily nation-states, have to 'outsiders' and 'foreigners'. He then takes the theoretical approaches in context by discussing the ethics of hospitality and membership of political communities, issues of mutual aid and humanitarianism abroad, the ethics of harm related to interstate international violence, and the challenge of severe global poverty. The book concludes by suggesting that the terms of international ethical life in the 21st century require reframing in a way that focuses more intently on the nature of harm between communities and individuals.

This book provides students and scholars with a conceptual framework with which to analyse the policies, actions and philosophy of governments, NGOs and international corporations. Above all, it offers the means whereby individuals can assess their own positions on contemporary ethical issues such as global poverty, humanitarian intervention, migration and refugees and global warming.

1

Introduction

[A]t the foundation of morals lies the principle that if morality is to be argued about at all, then the onus of justification lies upon those who propose to treat men (sic) differently. The very process of moral argument presupposes the principle that everyone is to be treated the same until reason to the contrary is shown. This principle is formal in the sense that it does not prescribe how in fact anyone is to be treated. But it has important practical consequences. For it forces into the open the justification of treating people differently because of their age, sex, intelligence or color.

MacIntyre 1966: 231

Here are a few decisions facing contemporary policymakers and citizens around the world:

•	Who is responsible for ending poverty in the world’s poorest countries?
•	Who is responsible for ending the suffering of refugees and displaced persons languishing in refugee camps?
•	Is it fair that industrialized countries agree to limit their carbon emissions while developing countries are allowed to increase theirs?
•	Should we reduce our carbon emissions even if it means a loss of economic growth and a rise in unemployment?
•	Should I give money for humanitarian relief in conflict zones or will it do more harm than good?
•	Is it harmful to consider such aid charity? Or should we treat it as an obligation of justice or morality?
•	Should I or my government end poverty at home before giving aid to the poor abroad?
•	What criteria should governments use to assess refugee and migration intakes?
•	Should we accept more refugees and asylum seekers and fewer skilled migrants?

The answer we and our governments give to these questions and others like them reflect the fundamental question of international ethics: how should members of ‘bounded’ communities, primarily nation-states, treat ‘outsiders’.

Ever since human beings gathered into social groups they have been confronted by the issue of how to treat outsiders. Human beings have continually lived in more or less bounded communities that draw ethically relevant distinctions between members and non-members, or between insiders and outsiders. Most communities have drawn significant moral distinctions between insiders and outsiders, applying different standards accordingly. At the same time, many communities and individuals have not made these distinctions absolute and have offered hospitality, aid and charity to strangers. Second only to the realist assertion that there is little room for ethics in the relations between states, is the issue of the moral relevance of boundaries and borders. More specifically, do we have any duties to ‘others’, or should we simply be concerned with our own community’s self-interest and survival?

The study of international ethics also questions whether it is right to make such a distinction between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ in the first place. The age of globalization brings the ethical significance of national boundaries into stark relief. Even though our world may be characterized by high levels of interdependence, we still tend to live morally ‘constrained’ or isolated ethical lives in which we take national borders as having major ethical status. Many people agree with this proposition when taken at face value, yet these same people often unknowingly contradict it by practising discrimination between members of their own community and outsiders. Many people, though by no means all, in their daily lives will not consciously discriminate against others or think that different rules apply to different people because of their race, ethnicity, gender and so on. Therefore, when we see pictures of starving people in foreign parts of the world or see victims of an earthquake, or similar disaster, whether it be in Los Angeles or Ankara we recognize the victims as people. We might think something like ‘nobody ought to have to go through that’, or simply ‘how awful to have to live under those conditions’. We might even think that we might give some money to help them out. However, most people will also think and act out their lives with the assumption that the national community, and the people they see on a day-to-day basis, like family, are their primary realm of concern in a moral sense and should be their first priority. In this sense, people might consider themselves morally obligated to their compatriots and family, in the sense that it would be wrong not to aid them. This means that they do not consider themselves obliged to help people in distant countries; nor do they believe it is morally wrong to think this way. However, they may perceive foreigners as deserving recipients of charity and, while considering it a good thing to help outsiders, not regard such action to be a moral obligation. More commonly, this is expressed in terms of moral priority. We owe more to our own kind and less to outsiders, and then only after our domestic duties have been dispatched.

In his recent work, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer draws our attention to these everyday assumptions by making an interesting comparison of the response of charities and individuals to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Singer (2002: 165) points out that the American public gave 1.3 billion dollars to the victims of the attacks, residents of Manhattan and families of fire-fighters and other services. The average amount given was US $5,300 per family in lower Manhattan. Singer (2002: 165) then compares this with the figure for private donations towards foreign aid, which amounted to US $20 per family going towards the poorest families in the world. While the outpouring of emotion and support for fellow Americans on one hand shows an empathy with strangers, this empathy is qualified by the fact that these strangers were part of the same community (USA). Singer’s point is not that it was wrong to give money to the victims of the attacks, but that the response was disproportionate given the everyday needs of the poorest people in the world. Singer argues that this is only possible because we automatically privilege our ‘own’. Singer’s is a cosmopolitan sentiment because he argues there is no good reason why our sense of community or ‘fellow feeling’ ought to restrict our moral obligations (see chapter 1).

Three questions in particular lie at the heart of international ethics as a field of study:

1	Do we have fundamentally different moral responsibilities to outsiders from those we have to our compatriots and fellow citizens (in other words, ought outsiders to be treated as moral equals)?
2	What is the nature of the obligations or responsibilities that we owe to those beyond our borders, that is, what might those principles be? Do we have duties of mere charity, or are substantive obligations owed to other human beings in distant parts of the world?
3	How can we interpret these principles and how can they be applied?

Most thinkers of international ethics 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 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 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.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the field of ethics is defined as: ‘The science of morals; the department of study concerned with the principles of human duty.’ International ethics is the study of the nature of human duty in relation to ‘strangers’. This book examines the ethical significance of boundaries and the nature of ethical responsibilities, duties or obligations that members of national communities have to outsiders or members of political communities that are outside the boundaries of one’s own national state, under contemporary conditions of globalization.

Much of recent Western ethics is fundamentally informed by the twin values of liberty and equality. The central ethical question concerns how to treat others as both free and equal individuals, and what duties arise from this recognition. This preoccupation carries over into discussion of international ethics, where in some sense the central questions concern how to apply these values across national/ political and cultural borders. That is, even if we accept that liberty and equality are universal values, do we apply them in relation to outsiders and, if so, how?

The vast majority of theoretical frameworks of international ethics are underpinned by a universalist stance of some form, and incorporate ideas of human equality and freedom. In this context, the presence of the ‘other’ raises the question of what sort of ethical standards we should apply in our relationships with other communities. Can we cause harm to outsiders that we would consider wrong if applied to insiders? Should we treat outsiders according to our own ethical framework or their unique ethical codes? Ought we simply to tolerate them? Do any ethical standards apply between us?

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. This is often referred to as the problem of cultural, or moral, pluralism. If there are many different moral frameworks at work in the world, and no single authority to arbitrate between them, how are we to know what is the right thing to do or, rather, whose standard of right and wrong to apply?

One way to start thinking through this thorny issue is to begin with the types, rather than the substance, of moral/ethical duties. The most common form taken by the discussion of ethical obligations or duties is in terms of either positive or negative duties. Positive duties are duties to actively do something. In contrast, negative duties are duties to not do something or to stop doing something, usually duties to do no harm or to stop harming or cause suffering to others. Thus, a state has a positive duty to protect and ensure the welfare of its citizens and a negative duty not to inflict undue suffering or deny human rights. Traditionally, ethical and normative thought in the international realm has been dominated by negative duties and, in particular, the duty of non-intervention, in part because negative duties are more likely to be acceptable from different moral frameworks. The idea of positive ethical duties underlies the recent UN Report on the international ‘Responsibility to Protect’, where it is argued that states have a positive duty to aid or come to the rescue of the citizens of other countries if they are suffering from grave human rights abuses and their own country cannot or will not do anything, or is the cause of the problem. This is a positive duty because states are being asked to act to do good. The doctrine of RTP is intended to replace the negative duty of nonintervention, whereby states had a responsibility to not intervene in other state’s affairs. However, it is a more controversial and by no means established doctrine, in part because it is harder to get a consensus about positive duties. It is also worth noting that positive duties can give rise to negative duties and, more controversially, vice versa. Thus, Thomas Pogge argues (chapter 7) that not only do states have a negative duty to cease harming the poor through an unjust international economic order; they also have a positive duty to construct a new economic order that harms no one, or does not create poverty.

In the context of international ethics, positive and negative duties can be understood in three types of relationships:

•	What ‘we’ do to ‘them’ (and vice versa).
•	What ‘they’ do to each other.
•	What ‘everyone’ does to ‘everyone’ else.

What ‘we’ to do ‘them’ refers to the transboundary relationships that occur between communities, in which ‘our’ community might, for instance, harm or aid another. Thus, we have both positive and negative duties in direct relation to the effects our actions, and sometimes our inactions, have on others. We also have both types of duties in relation to the actions of members of other communities in their relations with each other – for instance, when governments deny human rights to their citizens or when war causes humanitarian emergencies. In these cases we may or may not consider ourselves to have duties to intervene, or assist, or in some cases duties to cease assisting, if this would mean supporting oppressive governments. Contemporary Zimbabwe illustrates this issue well: the situation raises the question of whether the suffering of the Zimbabweans is a purely internal affair, or whether there is a duty on outsiders to intervene to stop or alleviate this suffering (which is caused largely by other Zimbabweans), and whether there is a duty to cease providing any support for the government by, for example, preventing companies from dealing with it. (A German company prints the national currency and thus literally bankrolls it, so arguably allowing the suffering to continue.) The third category of relationship refers to duties that we all have to each other as members and inhabitants of planet Earth.

The case of global warming illustrates this idea: everyone on the planet will be affected by human-induced climate change, though in different ways. Likewise, everyone on the planet has contributed in some way to the generation of greenhouse gases, though in vastly different proportions. At face value, it seems reasonably clear that there are negative duties for those countries that have contributed most to global warming, and who will likely do so in the future, to cease doing so. There is a proportionate responsibility on behalf of the advanced industrial countries to reduce their greenhouse emissions (GHE) and to take financial responsibility for the harms that their past and future emissions will cause others. There are also positive duties on behalf of the richer states to aid those with the least capacity to adjust to the costs involved in global warming. This is regardless of, but compounded by, the rich countries’ role in causing the problem. That is, there are positive duties to aid the poorest states and populations, who will be disproportionately affected and who have done the least to contribute to global warming. We can think, for instance, of countries like Bangladesh, mostly at or below sea level, or Pacific island states, which are barely industrialized but which are likely to be the first to disappear. In addition, there is also a positive duty that is arguably generated by the negative duty. If we have harmed someone we ought to help them overcome the harm we have caused them, especially if they are unable to do so unassisted (retributive justice). That is, there is not only a negative duty to cease or reduce greenhouse emissions, but also a positive duty to redress the damage done. This is an issue of retributive justice; a duty to aid those most affected by one’s harms. These arguments are buttressed by the capacity of rich states to pay and by the two different types of costs that are likely to be faced by all countries (distributive justice). One is the cost of reducing greenhouse emissions and the other is the cost of dealing with the likely impacts of rising sea levels and other environmental consequences. Poorer countries are at a disadvantage in both regards. The overall costs to rich states of addressing global warming are proportionally lower than for poor states. Because they are richer, they can afford more. In addition, the costs that might be incurred by the rich states are likely to be of a qualitatively different nature. For rich states, dealing with climate change might only impact upon the luxury or non-necessary end of their quality of life, such as whether or not they can afford to drive large cars or have air conditioning; whereas for poor states reducing emissions will more likely impact upon the basic necessities of life and survival (see Shue 1992).

In sum, we have positive and negative duties in relationship to things that affect everyone. We have duties to cease polluting and duties to aid those who suffer, or will suffer, as a result of our actions. We might also have positive duties to defend human rights or eradicate poverty and unnecessary suffering everywhere. The issue of moral pluralism manifests itself differently in each of these different relationships. In the first, we must ask ourselves and ‘them’ whether our actions are justifiable. In the second, deciding what duties we do have becomes more difficult because there may be different standards of right and wrong at work, and what may appear immoral to us may not be to ‘them’. It also raises the question of whether it is possible to claim that some practices are always wrong regardless. The third relationship raises the issue of whether common standards can apply across moral frameworks in situations where everyone’s interests are affected. In this context moral pluralism is an obstacle, as there is no agreement, but also arguably less relevant as the common interest, or common good, is more clearly identified.

These three relationships will be used throughout this book to interpret and evaluate different approaches and positions. The major distinction we can identify is between cosmopolitans, who tend to interpret all questions through the lens of the third category, and anti-cosmopolitans, who tend to argue that we have largely only negative duties in relation to the first category. Before proceeding further, it is necessary to briefly understand these categories.

Cosmopolitanism and anti-cosmopolitanism

Most scholars (and indeed most people), writing about international ethics can be situated somewhere on the spectrum covered by the two main categories: cosmopolitan and anti-cosmopolitanism, each of which contains a number of subcategories.

The primary issue at stake in these debates is whether human beings ought to be considered as one single moral community, or as a collection of separate communities, each with their own ethical standards. If human beings are considered as one moral community (third relationship), then one can argue that there are positive duties for the wealthy to end poverty and hunger in the poorest parts of the world. If, however, human beings are considered in terms of separate moral communities, then any such obligations are severely limited and we may have only negative duties not to contribute to destitution. Alternatively, one may argue that it is indefensible to enforce, say, human rights laws upon those who do not share the assumptions upon which they are based. One may argue that nations do not have anything other than a charitable duty to accept refugee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• HalfTitle
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Cosmopolitanism
• 3 Anti-cosmopolitanism
• 4 Hospitality: Entry and Membership
• 5 Humanitarianism and Mutual Aid
• 6 The Ethics of Harm: Violence and Just War
• 7 Impermissible Harms: Global Poverty and Global Justice
• 8 Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index