“The Moral Standing of States” is the title of an essay Michael Walzer wrote in response to four critics of the theory of nonintervention defended in Just and Unjust Wars. It states a theme to which he has returned in subsequent work. I offer four sets of comments. First, by way of introduction, I describe the controversy between Walzer and his critics and try to identify the central point of contention. Second, I make some observations about the wider conception of global justice suggested by Walzer's remarks, emphasizing the extent of the difference between this conception and the traditional view of a “society of states” to which it stands as an alternative. The central value in Walzer's conception is collective self-determination, so I comment about its meaning and importance. Finally, I consider whether and how concerns about the moral standing of states bear on the kinds of cases of humanitarian intervention that the world community has actually faced since the book and article were written, particularly since the end of the cold war.

Nonintervention has been a particularly important and occasionally disturbing principle for liberal scholars, such as John Stuart Mill and Michael Walzer, who share a commitment to basic and universal human rights. On the one hand, liberals have provided some of the strongest reasons to abide by a strict form of the nonintervention doctrine. It was only with the security of national borders that peoples could work out the capacity to govern themselves as free citizens. On the other hand, those very same principles of universal human dignity when applied in different contexts have provided justifications for overriding or disregarding the principle of nonintervention.

In explaining this dual logic I present an interpretive summary of s'Mill famous argument against and for intervention, presented in his “A Few Words on Non-Intervention” (1859), that illustrates what makes Mill's “few words” both so attractive and alarming to us. We should be drawn to Mill's arguments because he is among the first to address the conundrums of modern intervention. The modern conscience tries simultaneously to adhere to three contradictory principles: first, the cosmopolitan, humanitarian commitment to assistance, irrespective of international borders; second, respect for the significance of communitarian, national self-determination; and, third, accommodation to the reality of international anarchy, which puts a premium on self-help national security. I stress, more than has been conventional, the consequentialist character of the ethics of both nonintervention and intervention.

Comparing Mill's “Non-Intervention” and Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars (1977) links two classic statements on just wars of intervention. I conclude that interventionist arguments should go beyond the three paradigmatic cases Walzer explores in Just and Unjust Wars. But while they can draw on Mill's “Non-Intervention,” they need to offer a more convincing set of criteria for when such interventions are likely to do more good than harm

Treaty Norms and Climate Change Mitigation

Darrel Moellendorf

Currently the international community is discussing the regulatory framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. The unveiling of the new framework is scheduled to occur at the December 2009 COP in Copenhagen. The stakes are high, since any treaty will affect the development prospects of per capita poor countries and will determine the climate change–related costs borne by poor people for centuries to come. Failure to arrive at an agreement would have grave effects on the development prospects of poor countries, many of which will experience the most severe effects of climate change. The original UNFCCC treaty recognizes these kinds of concerns and requires that further treaty negotiation pay them heed. Any agreement will be required to conform to UNFCCC norms related to sustainable development and the equitable distribution of responsibilities. In this paper I argue that UNFCCC norms tightly constrain the range of acceptable agreements for the distribution of burdens to mitigate climate change. I conclude that any legitimate treaty must put much heavier mitigation burdens on industrialized developed countries. Of the various proposals that have received international attention, two in particular stand out as possibly satisfying UNFCCC norms regarding the distribution of responsibilities.

Since 1989 we have witnessed a proliferation of efforts to develop international norms of the rights of ethnocultural minorities, such as the UN's 1992 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, the Council of Europe's 1995 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and the Organization of American States' 1997 draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This activity at the level of international law is reflected in a comparable explosion of interest in minority rights among normative political theorists.

In this context, Michael Walzer's work occupies an important but somewhat anomalous role. On the one hand, he was arguably the first political theorist, at least in the postwar era, to take seriously the issue of minority rights. Nonetheless, Walzer's work has had surprisingly little enduring impact on multiculturalism debates in either academic political theory or international law.

One explanation for this puzzle is that Walzer's substantive discussion of minority rights seems to sit uneasily with his more foundational theory of justice, laid out in Spheres of Justice. I want to suggest a distinct (but complementary) explanation for why Walzer's work has not permeated the debate, focusing less on metaethical worries about his account of common meanings, and more on the practicalities of how he categorizes ethnic diversity. Walzer's state-differentiated but minority-undifferentiated approach simply does not connect to the governing premises of the larger academic and public debate, which treat minorities as differentiated and states as undifferentiated. I believe it is Walzer's idiosyncratic approach to categorization—more than his controversial theory of justice-as-common-meanings—which explains his relatively marginal role in the multiculturalism debate.

The past two decades have witnessed the proliferation of comprehensive international missions of peacebuilding and reconstruction, aimed not simply at bringing conflict to an end but also at preventing its recurrence. Recent missions, ranging from relatively modest involvement to highly complex international administrations, have generated a debate about the rights and duties of international actors to reconstruct postconflict states. In view of the recent growth of such missions, and the serious challenges and crises that have plagued them, we seek in this article to address some of the gaps in the current literature and engage in a critical analysis of the moral purposes and dilemmas of reconstruction. More specifically, we construct a map for understanding and evaluating the different ethical imperatives advanced by those who attempt to rebuild war-torn societies. In our view, such a mapping exercise is a necessary step in any attempt to build a normative defence of postconflict reconstruction. The article proceeds in two stages: first, we present the various rationales for reconstruction offered by international actors, and systematize these into four different “logics”; second, we evaluate the implications and normative dilemmas generated by each logic.

Justice and the Convention on Biological Diversity

Doris Schroeder and Thomas Pogge

Benefit sharing as envisaged by the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is a relatively new idea in international law. Within the context of non-human biological resources, it aims to guarantee the conservation of biodiversity and its sustainable use by ensuring that its custodians are adequately rewarded for its preservation.

Prior to the adoption of the CBD, access to biological resources was frequently regarded as a free-for-all. Bioprospectors were able to take resources out of their natural habitat and develop commercial products without sharing benefits with states or local communities. This paper asks how CBD-style benefit-sharing fits into debates of justice. It is argued that the CBD is an example of a set of social rules designed to increase social utility. It is also argued that a common heritage of humankind principle with inbuilt benefit-sharing mechanisms would be preferable to assigning bureaucratic property rights to non-human biological resources. However, as long as the international economic order is characterized by serious distributive injustices, as reflected in the enormous poverty-related death toll in developing countries, any morally acceptable means toward redressing the balance in favor of the disadvantaged has to be welcomed. By legislating for a system of justice-in-exchange covering nonhuman biological resources in preference to a free-for-all situation, the CBD provides a small step forward in redressing the distributive justice balance. It therefore presents just legislation sensitive to the international relations context in the 21st century.