The Preventive Use of Force: A Cosmopolitan Institutional Proposal

Ethics and International Affairs

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 1-22

  Buchanan, Allen ^a   Keohane, Robert O ^a  

^a DUKE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 3142783294     PISSN: 08926794     EISSN: 17477093     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-7093.2004.tb00447.x     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
2. For the classic statement, see Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 6th ed., revised by Kenneth W. Thompson (New York: Knopf, 1985), p. 12. Advocates of the National Interest view need not be moral skeptics; instead they may hold that state leaders have one supreme moral obligation… to serve the national interest…and that this obligation overrides all other principles of morality. Those who espouse the National Interest view may disagree among themselves, of course, as to whether a policy of recourse to preventive force, or any particular decision to use preventive force, is in fact likely to serve the national interest or be detrimental to it.
3. “National Security Strategy of the United States of America September 2002,” p. 6; available at www. whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf.
4. The position we endorse is sometimes called Moderate Cosmopolitanism, which allows one to give a limited priority to the interests of one's own nation and does not require strict impartiality. It is a liberal form of cosmopolitanism, since it emphasizes the basic human rights of all persons. One could imagine other kinds of cosmopolitanism, such as Marxism, that forbid discrimination on grounds of nationality, but do not focus on human rights. For a philosophical justification for the assumption that there are human rights, see Allen Buchanan, “Human Rights,” in Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law (forthcoming, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
5. See Arnold H. Loewy, “Conspiracy,” in Criminal Law in a Nutshell (St. Paul, Minn.: West Group, 2000), p. 260
6. Joshua Dressler, “Inchoate Offenses,” in Cases and Materials on Criminal Law, 2nd ed. (St. Paul, Minn.: West Group, 1999), p. 765.
7. Paul Gordon Lauren, “Coercive Diplomacy and Ultimata: Theory and Practice in History,” in Alexander L. George and William E. Simons, eds., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994), p. 23.
8. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 69–78.
9. Independent International Commission on Kosovo, Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
10. Andreas Schedler, “Conceptualizing Accountability,” in Andreas Schedler, Larry Diamond, and Marc F. Plat-tner, eds., The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1999), p. 17. The word “punishment” could be interpreted in too formal and restrictive a way. We accept this definition only with the proviso that it refers more broadly to a penalty.
11. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
12. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Richard Crawley, trans., bk. V, para. 84 (New York: Modern Library, 1982), p. 351.
13. For a more general argument, see Robert O. Keohane, “Governance in a Partially Globalized World,” American Political Science Review 95, no. 1 (March 2001), pp. 1–13.
14. See also Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan, The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 30
15. Norman Frohlich and Joe A. Oppenheimer, Choosing Justice: An Experimental Approach to Ethical Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
16. Here it might be objected that the strongest states might agree ex ante to pay compensation if an ex post review found their preventive actions to be unjustified, but simply fail to pay up. To avoid this problem, assets could be escrowed ex ante. Such an arrangement was used in the agreements that ended the U.S.-Iran hostage crisis in 1981 and that established the U.S.-Iran Claims Tribunal. See Robert Carswell and Richard Davis, “Crafting the Financial Settlement,” in Warren Christopher et al., eds., American Hostages in Iran: The Conduct of a Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, for the Council on Foreign Relations, 1985), pp. 201–34
17. document in American Hostages in Iran: The Conduct of a Crisis., Appendix D, pp. 405–422.
18. See George Akerlof,“The Market for Lemons,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 84, no. 3 (August 1970), pp. 488–500.
19. I. L. Claude likens the UN Security Council veto to “a fuse in an electrical circuit,” reflecting the wise conviction that “in cases of sharp conflict among the great powers the Council ought, for safety's sake, to be incapacitated.” I. L. Claude, Power and International Relations (New York: Random House, 1962), p. 160.
20. This necessity raises the problem of an ex post veto by the intervening state or states of the findings of the impartial commission or penalties implied by those findings. This problem could be solved by adapting a suggestion recently made by Thomas Franck, who points out that Article 27 provides that “decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of nine members.” That is, on procedural matters, the veto is inapplicable. Ex ante the Council could decide that votes on the composition and report of the impartial commission, and on any recommendations for penalties, would be considered procedural. (Professor Franck's proposal concerns specification of what constitutes a “material breach” regarding UN resolutions concerning Iraq. See his “Inspections and Their Enforcement: A Modest Proposal,” American Journal of International Law 96 (October 2002), pp. 899–900.
21. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (1532), ch. VI.