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Recent work in the ethics of international relations has done much to challenge the just war theory. In doing so, it raises the question of when it is permissible for political leaders and strong powers to justify the use of force. The right of humanitarian intervention against another state for the purpose of protecting people at risk in that other state raises fundamental inquires. States have begun advocating a right to undertake interventions to stop mass violations, especially since the humanitarian tragedies in Rwanda, Burundi, Bosnia, Kosovo and elsewhere. The paper discusses the profound ethical dilemmas related humanitarian intervention which accord because of the diversity of ethical and political perspectives that shape the contemporary world. Keywords: ethics of international relations; intersubjectivity; just war theory; responsibility to protect, violence, 'My desire is [...] that America will come into the full light of the day when all know that she puts human rights above all other rights and that her [...]

International Justice, War Crimes, and Terrorism THE topics addressed in this volume--international justice, war crimes, and terrorism--are among the most important that mankind faces in the twenty-first century. They are [...]

Noam Chomsky discusses social, political and economic issues. Topics include the General Agreement on Trade in Services, information access and thought control, free trade, intellectualism, and military intervention.

Until the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, few aside from professional aid workers paid attention to one of the first major humanitarian crises of the twenty-first century. After over [...]

In September 1999, the Independent International Commission for Kosovo held its first meeting in Stockholm with a brief to analyze objectively the Kosovo crisis that led to the first ever [...]

This essay argues that the ethics of humanitarian intervention cannot be readily subsumed by the ethics of just war without due attention to matters of political and moral motivation. In the modern era, a just war draws directly from self-benefitting motives in wars of self-defense, or indirectly in wars that enforce international law or promote the global common good. Humanitarian interventions, in contrast, are intuitively admirable insofar as they are other-regarding. That difference poses a challenge to the casuistry of humanitarian intervention because it makes it difficult to reason by analogy from the case of war to the case of humanitarian intervention. The author develops this point in dialogue with Michael Walzer, the U.S. Catholic bishops, and President Clinton. He concludes by showing how a casuistry of intervention is possible, developing a motivational rationale that draws on the Golden Rule. KEY WORDS: altruism, casuistry, Golden Rule, humanitarian intervention, just-war tradition, practical reasoning

In this paper I explore the notion of collective moral responsibility as it pertains both to nation-states contemplating humanitarian armed intervention in international social conflicts, and as it pertains to social groups perpetrating human rights violations in such conflicts. I take the Rwandan genocide as illustrative of such conflicts and make use of it accordingly. I offer an individualist account of collective moral responsibility, according to which collective moral responsibility is a species of joint responsibility.

The US has every right to intervene in civil conflicts in any part of the world especially if doing so would prevent massive loss of life. Risking the lives of members of the US armed forces for the greater good, which means having more lives saved than lost, is an essential part of the peacekeeping effort. The US cannot simply stand by and ignore such conflicts as genocide because it insults collective American conscience and largely reduces the country's moral authority. Furthermore, the US cannot afford a repeat of the Holocaust., When, if ever, should the United States participate in forcible military interventions for the primary purpose of saving lives in situations where vital U.S. interests are not at stake? This [...]

Theorists of world unity are diametrically opposed to the concept that state leaders and their citizens have no moral obligation to help those outside of their territories. However, they differ over the extent of one's obligations to those who are suffering as well as the moral agency of a state in the matter of foreign intervention. An analysis of key problems in the concept of external intervention will reflect the difficulties behind the assertion that the state is a moral agent of humanitarianism.

CHRIS GALECZKA, an eighth-grader from Sterling Heights, Michigan, won the recent National Geography Bee by correctly identifying as Afghanistan a Central Asian country in which Pashtu and Dari are the […]

There is a strong need for military intervention in the volatile post-Cold War era. Intervention in domestic affairs has both ethical and political legitimacy in a democratic state threatened by turmoil, which may adversely affect regional or international security. In most cases, the UN Security Council should authorize intervention. There may be a conflict between the ethical and political feasibilities, which should be adequately resolved. A moral justification for the interventions is also necessary.

A conference dedicated to examining the theme 'Rescue' bears a burden of proof. The purpose and logic of this conference challenges and confronts a political-moral principle of nonintervention which has [...]

The Biblical Episode: Three Versions of Solidarity I do not know whether it is of any particular importance that the man who 'stood up, and tempted' Jesus, asking him 'Master, [...]

I Recently wrote that 'the new world order should emphasize collective responsibility and mutual cooperation and should lay the groundwork for an objective basis on which potential ethnopolitical conflicts and [...]

I take it that the moral principle of rescue goes something like this: If (1) X is in peril, and (2) Y is saliently related to X's peril, and (3) [...]

To rescue people in need is a so-called positive duty. When we wish to clarify our moral intuitions, the distinction between negative and positive duties is of fundamental importance. Negative [...]

The demands of morality question the right of interventions and emphasize the need for ethical standards in permitting interventions. The just war tradition, with its many clauses to contain military actions, proves to be a moral guide for the policy makers. Many instances of intervention such as the liberation of Kuwait and operations in former Yugoslavia can be judged as ethically permissible by the just war tradition.

This note will include an introductory comment on the need for new thinking in foreign policy, a clarification of why the specific issue of humanitarian intervention forces us to reconsider [...]

Humanitarian intervention should be based on moral judgement on a collective basis, rather than merely on the threat to national security. If a nation becomes immune to suffering and barbarity abroad, then it risks becoming so on a national level also. The arguements against international intervention include the opportunities are endless if the principle of threat to national security is abandoned.

ON OCTOBER 3, a company of Army Rangers, the cream of America's fighting forces, was decimated in the streets of Mogadishu by what had been thought of as a ragtag [...]

ON NOVEMBER 6, 1881, in a small town in West Africa, two local chieftains wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Great Britain. It read as follows: Dear W. [...]

Humanitarian intervention has raised intractable problems as a tool designed to end the violence and brutal treatment of citizens in states that are currently consolidating in the wake of decolonization and later, the fall of communism, in Europe. Foreign intervention to end or alleviate the human suffering caused by civil war, genocide or starvation within an emerging state appears to be self-contradictory. As an example, it recognizes the integrity of the state and aims to safeguard territorial boundaries while interfering with the state's internal affairs and disregarding its autonomy.

Introduction After the Cold War ended, human rights became part of the new international security paradigm. Deterrence, balance of power, nuclear disarmament, proxy wars arid other Cold War tools went [...]

In his interestingly wrong-headed essay, Paul Miller argues that there are extraterritorial evils so great that they oblige the United States to intervene militarily to preempt them when they threaten, [...]

A state is not a church. A state exists not to redeem humankind or to do God s work but to provide for the security and well-being of the people [...]