>Oh sure...tease us with a subscription only link....
>
>On Tue, 8 Oct 2002 16:37:54 -0700
> "Luke Weiger" <lweiger at umich.edu> wrote:
>> ...seems to agree with me regarding the proper limits of
>> national
>> sovereignty. He must've missed Justin's sophisticated
>> defense on rule
>> utilitarian grounds :)
>>
> > http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i07/07b00701.htm
Chronicle Review - October 11, 2002
Navigating the Ethics of Globalization
By PETER SINGER
Consider two aspects of globalization: first, planes exploding as they slam into the World Trade Center, and second, the emission of carbon dioxide from the exhaust of gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles. One brought instant death and left unforgettable images that were watched on television screens all over the world; the other makes a contribution to climate change that can be detected only by scientific instruments. Yet both are indications of the way in which we are now one world, and the more subtle changes to which sport-utility-vehicle owners unintentionally contribute will almost certainly kill far more people than the more visible aspect of globalization. When people in rich nations switch to vehicles that consume more fuel than the cars they used to drive, they contribute to changes in the climate of Mozambique or Bangladesh -- changes that may cause crops to fail, sea levels to rise, and tropical diseases to spread.
As scientists pile up the evidence that continuing greenhouse-gas emissions will imperil millions of lives, the leader of the nation that emits the largest share of those gases has said: "We will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first are the people who live in America." President Bush's remarks were not an aberration, but an expression of an ethical view that he may have learned from his father. The first President George Bush had said much the same thing at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
But it is not only the two Bush administrations that have put the interests of Americans first. When it came to the crunch in the Balkans, the Clinton-Gore administration made it very clear that it was not prepared to risk the life of a single American in order to reduce the number of civilian casualties. In the context of the debate over whether to intervene in Bosnia to stop Serb "ethnic cleansing" operations directed against Bosnian Muslims, Colin L. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, quoted with approval the remark of the 19th-century German statesman Otto von Bismarck, that all the Balkans were not worth the bones of a single one of his soldiers. Bismarck, however, was not thinking of intervening in the Balkans to stop crimes against humanity. As chancellor of imperial Germany, he assumed that his country followed its national interest. To use his remark today as an argument against humanitarian intervention is to return to 19th-century power politics, ignoring both the bloody wars that style of politics brought about in the first half of the 20th century, and the efforts of the second half of the 20th century to find a better foundation for peace and the prevention of crimes against humanity.
That forces us to consider a fundamental ethical issue. To what extent should political leaders see their role narrowly, in terms of promoting the interests of their citizens, and to what extent should they be concerned with the welfare of people everywhere?
There is a strong ethical case for saying that it is wrong for leaders to give absolute priority to the interests of their own citizens. The value of the life of an innocent human being does not vary according to nationality. But, it might be said, the abstract ethical idea that all humans are entitled to equal consideration cannot govern the duties of a political leader. Just as parents are expected to provide for the interests of their own children, rather than for the interests of strangers, so too in accepting the office of president of the United States, President Bush has taken on a specific role that makes it his duty to protect and further the interests of Americans. Other countries have their leaders, with similar roles in respect to the interests of their fellow citizens.
There is no world political community, and as long as that situation prevails, we must have nation-states, and the leaders of those nation-states must give preference to the interests of their citizens. Otherwise, unless electors were suddenly to turn into altruists of a kind never before seen on a large scale, democracy could not function. Our leaders feel that they must give some degree of priority to the interests of their own citizens, and they are, so this argument runs, right to do so. But what does "some degree of priority" amount to, in practice?
[...sorry but it goes on for 25k...]