Global Ethics

Anarchy, Freedom and International Relations

Mervyn Frost

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780415466097
• eBook ISBN: 9781134036929
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civics & Citizenship
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This provocative and original book challenges the commonplace that contemporary international interactions are best understood as struggles for power. Eschewing jargon and theoretical abstraction, Mervyn Frost argues that global politics and global civil society must be understood in ethical terms. International actors are always faced with the ethical question: So, what ought we to do in circumstances like these?

Illustrating the centrality of ethics to our understanding of global politics and global civil society with detailed case studies, Frost shows how international actors constitute one another in global social practices that are underpinned by specific ethical commitments.

Case Studies examined include:

• 
  
  

• The War on Iraq
• The 'Global War on Terror'
• Iran
• Human Rights
• Globalization and Migration
• The use of Private Military Companies.

Global Ethics forces readers to confront their own necessary ethical engagement as citizens and rights holders in global society. Failure to understand international relations in ethical terms will lead to misguided action. This book should be read by all scholars and students of international relations as well as the general reader seeking an accessible account of the importance of ethical decisions in world affairs.

1
INTRODUCTION

The goal of this book is to make the case that international interactions should be understood in ethical terms.¹ International actors are generally concerned to act ethically and they take pains to point out the ethical flaws in the actions of others. They are sensitive to and concerned about the ethical criticisms of others. The argument is directed against a view, widely held by adherents of a number of different approaches to the subject, that we ought to understand these relations in terms of struggles for power (classical realism); the structural forces in play in the domain (structural realism and Marxist approaches); or in terms of the so-called ‘power/knowledge’ nexus that exists in various discourses constituting the field of international relations. Against these my contention is that international interactions are always ethically informed, but that this aspect is often hidden and not made apparent. I shall argue that bringing this aspect of our international interactions to light provides us with a more comprehensive, deeper and richer view of the field. Moreover, taking what one might call ‘the ethical turn’ also helps us understand the play of politics and power in a more nuanced way. Furthermore, an ethically informed understanding gives us a good account of what

is happening in international affairs and opens the way for the making of better policy choices. Part of the argument to be offered in this book is that the very act of analysing international affairs is itself an action, open to ethical evaluation. We can evaluate analyses of international affairs, such as the one presented in this book, in terms of whether they are ethical or not.

The arguments to be set out here are not primarily focused on meta-level analyses of ethics in IR which would only be of interest to philosophers, but which would have little relevance for participants in global politics. Rather this analysis puts forward what I take to be the most convincing substantive ethical analysis of our contemporary international practices. This analysis is of direct relevance to all participants in contemporary international politics.

In what follows I write as a participant in international affairs and I am directing myself to all my fellow participants in the contemporary practices of international relations. This is not a monograph directed specifically at specialists in International Relations.

THE UBIQUITY OF ETHICS IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

When we participate in international affairs, as we all do in many different ways, ethical considerations manifest themselves in all the phases of our involvement. They are apparent in the way in which we characterize the international circumstances within which we find ourselves; they are manifest in the explanations we give to ourselves and others about how and why this state of affairs came to be as it is; they play a role in our determination of what lines of action are open to us given our circumstances; and they play a key role in the justifications we offer for having chosen one course of action rather than another. An example illustrates these points.² Consider the USA’s military engagement in Iraq in 2003. Prior to launching the expeditionary force, the administration of the USA made an evaluation of the existing situation. Its evaluation was made clear in speeches and

briefings.³ The view accepted by the administration in office at the time included an account of the recent history of the Iraqi state under its then ruler Saddam Hussein, leader of the Baathist party. The history included an account of the run-up, conduct and aftermath of the first Iraq war in 1991. Central to the account was an ethical evaluation of the non-democratic nature of the Iraqi state, the human rights-abusing policies of Hussein’s government, the wrongful invasion by Iraq of the state of Kuwait and the failure to obey the legal and ethical injunction of the international community’s stipulations in the post-war settlement. Crudely put, the account given portrayed Saddam Hussein and his government as the wrongdoers when judged from an ethical point of view. This ethical judgement was at the heart of the way in which the state of affairs just prior to the war was framed. Also, in the explanations given of the way things had developed after the first Gulf War, ethical propositions about the wrongdoing of Saddam Hussein’s government featured prominently. In particular, regular reference was made to the ethically wrongful use he and his government made of the ‘Oil for Food’ programme.

If we move on to consider the USA government’s consideration of the policy options it faced in Iraq, here again, ethical considerations played a key role. It is safe to assume that certain feasible options were, from the start, ruled out for ethical reasons. These would include the immediate use of maximum force, including the use of theatre nuclear weapons, the use of poison gas, the use of biological weapons and so on. These we may assume were not considered, or, if they were, were quickly turned aside. When force was contemplated the administration had to make decisions about the levels of force that were appropriate. These decisions were guided by well-known ethical constraints. For example, it was repeatedly stated that policies would be devised which would minimize collateral damage to civilians and so on.⁴ There were references to just war principles. Once the war option had been chosen then, once again, we see the salience of ethical considerations in the justifications provided for it. For example, on launching the expeditionary force into Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush presented it as an ethical action. He and his advisors relied on a number of ethical arguments. Some were produced prior to the commencement of the war and others emerged as the campaign continued. Some were explicitly stated, others were implied. These included that Iraq was in breach of its Security Council commitments in terms of UN Security Council Resolution 687 and subsequently 1441. The former Resolution required Iraq to destroy all its weapons of mass destruction and allow UN weapons inspectors to verify that this had been done. Resolution 1441 arose from Iraq’s failure to do this and it spelled out the consequences that would follow a further delay in completing these requirements. There are a number of different ethical arguments underlying this line of action. First, it rests on the requirement that states ought to keep their agreements (pacta sunt servanda) and especially those taken in accordance with international law. Second, the agreement itself was built on a number of ethical assumptions (many of which are embodied in international law) such as, states ought to desist from war and that entering into agreements to do this is, from an ethical point of view, a good thing. Also, underlying the assessment was the view that the UN itself is founded on a number of fundamental ethical principles and that the agreements it puts in place are good insofar as they promote these. President Bush also acted on the principle that Iraq was one of a number of states that formed what he called in his State of the Union Address in 2002 the ‘axis of evil’.⁵ Another ethical reason put forward was that Iraq harboured and supported international terrorists and that the international community of states had an ethical duty to oppose this – with force if necessary. These judgements themselves, of course, rest on the ethical contention that terrorism is wrong. Beyond these reasons, he referred to Iraq’s history of human rights abuses. This reason, in turn, supported another which was that there was an ethical requirement to bring about regime change so that a democratic state could be established to replace the tyrannous rule of the Sunni minority.⁶ Over and above these ethical considerations were others, more assumed than overtly stated, to do with the sanctions regime that had been in place against Iraq since the first Gulf War. These sanctions, themselves instituted for ethical reasons (to prevent genocide by Saddam Hussein against Kurdish Iraqis), had been shown to have damaged the innocent, including women and children. This itself, then, was a supplementary ethical judgement. A continuation of this policy would have been ethically untenable. Yet the alternative also seemed ethically untenable. Simply lifting sanctions would have rewarded Saddam Hussein and his regime for their ethical wrongdoing. In order to prevent him committing genocide against his own people again, some other course of action was required. Force seemed a feasible, legitimate and above all ethical option.

Any participant in international relations seeking to understand the second war against Iraq might have strong views about which of the above-mentioned ethical reasons for going to war were the ‘real’ reasons for Bush’s action and might have strong opinions about which were ‘good’ ethical reasons for war. But it is certain that, if one did not have some understanding of the ethical arguments for and against this policy, we would not understand the resulting war and the reasons for it at all.

Those on the receiving end of this war also justified what they did (or did not do) with reference to ethical considerations. For example, the Iraqi government claimed that Iraq had done its duty and had dismantled its weapons of mass destruction.⁷ After the war it turned out that this claim was true. The government also claimed that it was not a host to international terror, implying that Iraq ought not to be punished for an ethical wrong it did not commit. It claimed that the international community was behaving unethically in instituting and maintaining sanctions against the country. It made the ethical claim that the sanctions were harming the innocent. It claimed, too, that Iraq had a right not to be subject to unwarranted interference in its domestic affairs. As a sovereign state it had a right to non-intervention.⁸ Both are well-known ethical claims that states normally make for themselves.

Similarly, those not directly involved in the war, such as those many people around the world who opposed the American and British military intervention, justified their positions with regard to both ethical and legal considerations, the former always taken to underpin the latter. For example, there were many who said that the so-called ‘ethical’ reasons referred to above were all window-dressing used to hide more sinister (and unethical) underlying reasons to do with access to the oil resources in Iraq. The ethical argument here is that states, including the USA and the UK, are not entitled to simply pursue their own self-interest by military means. This would flout the sovereign right of the state of Iraq to control its own natural resources. Other arguments referred to the way in which the action of the USA and UK bypassed the processes of the UN. Underlying this argument is the ethical notion that states ought to follow the procedures set out by the UN, especially in matters of peace and war. A further argument stressed that military means ought only to be used as a last resort and that in this case the actors had not yet reached the stage of last resort. Other means, short of violence, were still available to the international community to use against the regime to prevent genocide and human rights abuses. Looking at all these ethical arguments in the round, it is clear that not all opponents of the war were agreed on all of these ethically-based arguments for opposing the war, but it is nevertheless the case that a student of international relations who failed to understand these ethical arguments would not have understood the war at all.

The import of all of the above is that getting to grips with the ethical issues at stake in the war against Iraq is central to understanding it. This point may be generalized as follows: In order to participate in international affairs, either as an individual or as part of a collective actor (such as a state, international organization or a corporation), one has to have some understanding about what is happening around one and why. As we have seen in the example just discussed, this requires that one understands the ethical dimensions of what has gone before, the ethical dimensions of the present state of affairs, the ethical aspects of various policy options and the ethical dimensions of the means whose use is under consideration.

The points made above about the war in Iraq, and the ethical arguments for and against it, are true of most (if not all) our actions in world politics. Sometimes we confront problems that are overtly ethical. For example, as citizens in states, we are often acutely aware of the ethical dimensions of the situations in which we find ourselves. Here are some of the overt ethical concerns that beset us: We worry about the justness of going to war, in general, not just in the Iraqi case.⁹ We have ethical misgivings about admitting or not admitting economic migrants to our countries. We have ethical concerns about the treatment of those detained on suspicion of being international terrorists. We are concerned about the treatment of national groups in specific states, for example, the Chechens in Russia, the Palestinians in Israel, the Québécois in Canada, the aboriginal peoples in Australia (and many others). On a number of occasions we might well have had concerns about whether to intervene in certain conflicts on humanitarian grounds. Those of us in the states being intervened in worried about whether to support intervention into our countries or not.¹⁰ Many ethical issues arise with regard to distributional issues globally. Some of these have been manifest in the most recent round of World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations: Is the European Union justified in maintaining subsidies to farmers which disadvantage the farmers in Third World countries? Are Third World countries justified in maintaining current tariff barriers preventing the First World countries gaining market access to their territories?

In the same way that many international problems are articulated and understood by us as ethical problems, so, too, is it the case that we justify many of the things that we do with reference to ethical criteria. For example, decisions to grant international aid are justified by reference to ethical considerations. Disaster aid is similarly justified in ethical terms. The young who attend the rock concerts for international causes understand themselves to be ethically motivated (at least in part).

Similarly, our stances with regard to specific wars are justified in ethical terms. In the most recent wars in the Middle East, as we have seen above, justifications have been offered that referred to, amongst other things, the just war tradition, pre-emptive self-defence, selfdefence, the prevention of tyranny, the promotion of freedom, the promotion of democracy and the protection of human rights. At the limit, the use of force was justified in terms of a struggle between good and evil.¹¹ Both in the Middle East and elsewhere actors in the international realm have referred to the sovereign rights of autonomous states and the rights of peoples to autonomy as grounds for using force. Reference has also often been made to religious rights – the right to be governed by Sharia law, for example. To refer to such a right is to make an ethical claim. It is not difficult to construe almost all our decisions and actions in the international domain as having an ethical dimension.

It is not only in our role as citizens of states that we view and present what we do in ethical terms. As individual men and women active in international affairs more generally we understand ourselves to be ethical actors pursing ethical goals. Many of us contribute to non-governmental organizations that seek to promote the well-being of those less fortunate than we are. In doing so, we understand ourselves to be acting for ethical reasons. Many of us, as individuals, participate in protests of one kind or another directed at what we perceive to be injustices abroad, whether these be in opposition to war, to apartheid, to genocide, to unjust distributions and so on. When disaster strikes we, as individuals, often contribute directly or indirectly to the relief efforts that follow. Many people, for ethical and religious reasons, working through religious movements, often become involved in international good works. Others make similar use of service organizations like Rotary, Round Table and Lions to engage in international activities of a similar kind. They also promote ‘good will’ educational visits by young people to foreign countries. Even as tourists we encounter any number of ethical issues that call upon us to make difficult decisions. Should we buy goods from stalls and bazaars run by children? Should we visit sites of archaeological interest, even when these are located in authoritarian states? Should we visit game reserves that are situated on sites claimed by the indigenous people who wish to use the land for traditional purposes and/or who see the land as holy because their ancestors were buried there? The ethical issues listed above do not only present themselves to Westerners but face international actors worldwide whether they be Buddhist, Hindu or followers of Islam.

Furthermore, beyond the ethical dimensions of our social and political relationships, there is a persistent ethical dimension to our economic activities in the international domain. It is a truism that the economic component is a core component of every person’s life. Each one of us needs to engage in some economic activity in order to live. It is now the case that ever greater proportions of our economic lives have an international dimension. At every point our international economic activities are shot through with ethical features. At the most basic level they rely on our notion of a right to own property.¹² Although property rights are often protected by law, we consider that the law of property itself has an ethical basis. Those who infringe such laws are themselves considered to be not just criminals in terms of the law but also wrongdoers in terms of widely recognized ethical standards.¹³ Similarly, we all have ideas about what would count as a just distribution of economic assets and what would constitute injustice. In pursuit of our economic goals we make contracts and we consider these to be ethically binding. Those who break them, we say, have committed not merely a legal wrong but also an ethical wrong. We have developed complex sets of laws governing our economic behaviour both at home and abroad. In general, we argue that the laws that have been created are ethically sound or at least have an ethical basis. Here and there, for ethical reasons, we propose that the laws be reformed. A good example of this kind of argument is to be found in the support that we give (or that we refuse to give) to the positions taken by sovereig...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Abstract
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Global ethical practices
• 3 Ethical incoherence: Individual rights versus states’ rights
• 4 Global terrorism understood in ethical terms
• 5 Defending anarchies
• References