[lbo-talk] Ethics in International Affairs

[dskinn10 at optonline.net]

Ismail,Is this for an undergraduate course or graduate course?If the latter, I would recommend looking into Alan Gilbert's Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy?Dan----- Original Message -----From: Chuck Grimes Date: Friday, May 20, 2011 8:18 pmSubject: Re: [lbo-talk] Ethics in International AffairsTo: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> > I will be teaching Ethics in international affairs in August as > part of my > new position (University of Guyana). The last good texts on the > subject were > kinda liberal, ... Now that I will design and teach my own> course, I would like to take a more Critical approach.> > Ismail Lagardien> > ----------> > My first thought reading the above---there are no ethics in > international > affairs. The relations are power relations between nation states.> > That's one thought. The other thought is about the UN which is > supposed to > compose an ethics through setting out the rules of conduct > between states. > The trouble with the UN, it is designed to be virtually > powerless in > enforcement of its charters, conventions, and resolutions.> > Consider the US has violated practically every article of the > Geneva > Conventions on War, as well as the Convention on Human Rights > and openly > done so with a lot of legal sounding mumbo jumbo to excuse itself.> > I don't know anything about this field. At a guess you are going > to have to > develop your own text from your lectures. What the professoriat > at UCB do or > did is piece together selected readings from various books, and > have them > scanned. They then took the scanned copies to a print center and > had them > make a laserprinter bound book in copies.> > I've thought a lot about this mention of ethics in international > affairs and > I am not sure why. I think it touches deeply on a lot of other > things I've > been thinking: theory of nation states, theory of rights, > theories of > history and intellectual history. These seem to follow directly > from the > endless stream of US and Israeli wrong doing, and the UN as > about the only > international arbiter of state conduct and conflict.> > It's interesting to muse on how the UN is politically structured > and why. > The Security Council acts like the House of Lords, back when it > had almost > all the power and Parliment had almost none. In this parallel > though the > Secretary General might correspond to a weak Prime Minister.> > What's going to be really interesting to watch is the > Palestinian move > toward member state status. You have to study the rights of the > Observer > Mission which is their current status and the rights of Member > States to see > why the US and Israel are more than usual freaked out.> > This is getting to complicated for moving week. Good Luck Ismail.> > CG > > ___________________________________> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk>