Humanities Core: Winter 2006

Week 8-2

I. The moral premise: societies in a state of nature

a. Self-defense

i. Doctrine of Pre-emption: a society cannot use force in self-defense until it is faced with a credible and imminent threat.

ii. The Bush Doctrine of Prevention a society can attack before a threat is imminent; we can attack “rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten” us. Or: “America will act against…emerging threats before they are fully formed” (p. 4).

b. Beitz on self-preservation (p. 52-5): nothing more than a right to protect the lives and security of individuals. No right of “national survival.”

i. cosmopolitanism—in asking moral questions, we should consider what is owed to individuals as such, regardless of their citizenship, nationality, gender, religion, and so on.

c. Innocents?

i. “Surgical strike”?

ii. Even in a state of nature, it is much more difficult to justify preventive strike as a just cause when many innocent people will die in the process.

II. The factual premise: are relations between societies as they exist today a Hobbesian state of nature?

a. Four conditions (Beitz, p. 36)

b. Existing organization (Beitz, pp. 37-40, 43-6)

i. International organization: United Nations (security and law), International Monetary Fund (financial stability), World Bank (development), World Health Organization (health policy), General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, now the World Trade Organization (trade), International Labor Organization (labor standards).

ii. Transnational organization—organization of people of common interest across different societies.

III. Assurance

a. Although there is no global sovereign, there are now established social practices, which will stably exist for the foreseeable future. (Beitz, p. 47)

i. Only general compliance is necessary

ii. Reduced threat of violence (Beitz, p. 44-6)

iii. Economic factors (Beitz, p. 43)

iv. Informal pressures (Beitz, p. 39)

IV. Inequality of power (Beitz, p. 40-1)

a. If one party is sufficiently powerful, it does not take significant risks in initiating cooperation even when it lacks assurance that others will cooperate.

i. Duty of Greater Power: the greater a state’s power in comparison to others, the greater its duty to build international arrangements that serve everyone—even if it could do better for itself making bargains and strategic alliances on its own.

1. Balanced by the right of sovereignty?

V. Fair Play

a. Duty of Fair Play: absent special justification, those who accept the benefits of a practice sustained by the participation of others must do their part when it comes time to do so. (Betiz, p. 57)

i. Is preventive war cheating, a violation of the Duty of Fair Play? Or is there some “special justification”?

VI. Exceptionalism

i. The Hobbesian right: without assurance that agents will generally comply with rules for the use of force, every agent has a right to preventive war (without the authorization of others).

ii. The exceptionalist right: when there is assurance that agents will generally comply with rules for the use of force, most agents have no right to preventive war without the authorization of others. Yet certain agents, such as the U.S., can wage war whenever they alone deem it necessary.

b. The U.S. is special because it is the U.S.?

c. The fact of power

d. U.S. as the sheriff

i. Greater responsibility for others, not less

e. Special vulnerabilities?

i. How do we limit the exception?

ii. If everyone has the privilege of preventive war, this is not exceptionalism.