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What obligations do nations have to protect citizens of other nations? As responsibility to our fellow human beings and to the stability of civilization over many years has ripened fully into a concept of a "just war," it follows naturally that the time has come to fill in the outlines of the realities and boundaries of what constitutes "just" humanitarian intervention. Even before the world changed radically on September 11, policymakers, scholars, and activists were engaging in debates on this nettlesome issue—following that date, sovereignty, human rights, and intervention took on fine new distinctions, and questions arose: Should sovereignty prevent outside agents from interfering in t...
This volume argues that a wide range of policies in the international system today – economic sanctions, military intervention, and counter terrorism policy – are part of a ‘punitive ethos’ that has arisen since the end of the Cold War.
The just war tradition is central to the practice of international relations, in questions of war, peace, and the conduct of war in the contemporary world, but surprisingly few scholars have questioned the authority of the tradition as a source of moral guidance for modern statecraft. Just War: Authority, Tradition, and Practice brings together many of the most important contemporary writers on just war to consider questions of authority surrounding the just war tradition. Authority is critical in two key senses. First, it is central to framing the ethical debate about the justice or injustice of war, raising questions about the universality of just war and the tradition’s relationship to ...
Once described by Trygve Lie as the "most impossible job on earth," the position of UN Secretary-General is as frustratingly constrained as it is prestigious. The Secretary-General's ability to influence global affairs often depends on how the international community regards his moral authority. In relation to such moral authority, past office-holders have drawn on their own ethics and religious backgrounds—as diverse as Lutheranism, Catholicism, Buddhism, and Coptic Christianity—to guide the role that they played in addressing the UN's goals in the international arena, such as the maintenance of international peace and security and the promotion of human rights. In The UN Secretary-Gene...
Bringing together an international team of contributors, this volume draws on international political theory and intellectual history to rethink the problem of a pluralistic world order. Inspired by the work of international political theorist Nicholas Rengger, the book focuses on three main areas of Rengger's contribution to the political theory of international relations: his Augustine-inspired idea of an 'Anti-Pelagian Imagination'; his Oakeshottian argument for a pluralist 'conversation of mankind'; and his ruminations on war as the uncivil condition in world politics. Through a critical engagement with his work, the book illuminates the promises and limitations of civility as a sceptical, non-utopian, anti-perfectionist approach to theorizing world order that transcends both realist pessimism and liberal utopianism.
This edited volume seeks to contest prevailing assumptions about torture and to consider why, despite its illegality, torture continues to be widely employed and misrepresented. The resurgence of torture and public justifications of it led to the central questions that this inter-disciplinary volume seeks to address: How is it possible for torture to be practiced when it is legally prohibited? What kinds of moves do agents make that render torture palatable? Why do so many ignore the evidence that torture is ineffective as an intelligence-gathering technique? Who are the victims of torture? The various contributors in the book look to history, the practices of interrogators, artistic represe...
Ethics, Diversity, and World Politics argues for the importance of the diversity of human ethical systems in world politics, defending the vitality of a 'pluralist' position in debates about how to ethically assess and respond to political challenges. Rooted in the 'English School' tradition of international relations theory, the book offers the first fundamental reformulation of the 'traditional pluralism' that fails to offer a persuasive defence of the normative desirability of ethical diversity in human affairs, resulting in a pluralist ethic that is statist, conservative, and unable to engage effectively with contemporary world politics. The book develops an alternative account of 'revived pluralism', rooted in a defence of the normative desirability of ethical diversity that draws upon political philosophy, political theory, and sociology, to establish a far more rigorous methodological basis for a pluralist position, whilst also enabling assessment of the limits of defensible diversity.
Hannah Arendt's approach to politics focuses on action and conduct, rather than institutions, constitutions, and states. In light of Arendtian conceptions of politics, essays in this book challenge conventional IR theories.
This book brings together seven original essays on the subject of evil in international relations. It considers questions of moral agency associated with the perpetration of evil acts by individuals and groups in the international sphere, and the range of ethical responses the international community has available to it in the aftermath of large-scale evils.
Philosophy typically ignores biographical, historical, and cultural aspects of theoriss’ lives in an attempt to take a supposedly abstract and objective view of their work. This book makes some new conclusions about Arendt’s theory by emphasizing how her experience of the world as displayed in her archival materials impacted her thought. Some aspects of Arendt’s life have been examined in detail before, including the fact she was stateless as well as her affair with Heidegger. Instead, this work explores different topics including the biographical and narrative moments of Arendt's own work, the role of archiving in her thought, pivotal events that have not been archived, her understand...