Abstract
There are some 165 independent nations in the world. Many are quite small, both in physical size and in population. Some would not fill a respectable American suburb.1 Nonetheless, all are held to be sovereign over the territory and people of their domain, and this sovereignty shapes many of the characteristic problems of the ethics of international relations.
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Notes
T. Buergenthal, ‘Domestic Jurisdiction, Intervention, and Human Rights: The International Law Perspective’, in P.G. Brown and D. MacLean (eds) Human Rights and US Foreign Policy (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1979) 111–20.
It is extremely difficult, given the years of turmoil and present isolation, to establish precise estimates of either the population of Cambodia or the numbers killed Recent estimates are that one to one and a half million Cambodians died as the result of the policies of the Khmer Rouge. ‘Controversy Over Toll’, New York Times (13 March 1987). The American CIA gave a rough estimate of a population of 5 million in 1980. The Hammond Almanac, op. cit., 540.
See P.R. Baehr and L. Gordenker, The United Nations: Reality and Ideal (New York, Praeger, 1984)
J.F. Green, The United Nations and Human Rights (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1956)
T. Zuijdwijk, Petitioning the United Nations: A Study in Human Rights (New York: St. Martin’s, 1982).
Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar has been less than enthusiastic in his support of human rights issues. ‘West Seeks Budget Reprieve for UN Rights Effort’, New York Times (9 June 1987).
A. James, Sovereign Statehood (London, Boston and Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986) 152.
President Jimmy Carter, ‘Commencement Address at the University of Notre Dame’, in D.P. Kommers and G.D. Loescher (eds) Human Rights and American Foreign Policy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979) 307.
This point is urged with great vigor by D. Luban in ‘Just War and Human Rights’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 9 (Winter 1980) 160–81.
See also: C. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979) 79 n.
M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977) 98–9.
One scholar who possibly shares this view is Gerald Doppelt, ‘Walzer’s Theory of Morality in International Relations’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 8 (Fall 1978) 3–27
‘Statism Without Foundations’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 9, (Summer 1980) 398–404.
As R. Bendix notes, ‘In the past, one ruler stood at the summit of the social heirarchy. Rulers possessed supreme status, great wealth, and commanding authority’ (p. 21). He states as well that, ‘The principle of hereditary monarchy was challenged only some two centuries ago’ (p. 4). Kings or People (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). Bendix provides a thorough discussion of the usual arguments in favor of the legitimacy of the idea of hereditary monarchy and of the transition to new views of legitimacy.
See also: J. N. Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922).
I. Buruma, ‘Marcos and Morality’, The New York Review of Books, 34 (13 August 1987) 24–7.
J. Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, edited by T.P. Peardon (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1952). See p. 105 for a nice juxtaposition of these two elements.
Gary Wills, however, has recently argued that Thomas Jefferson was more profoundly influenced by the Scottish Philosopher James Wilson. Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (Garden City: Doubleday, 1978) 248–55.
His views on this matter, however, have received a careful and skeptical response from Edmund S. Morgan, ‘The Heart of Jefferson’, The New York Review of Books, 25 (17 August 1978) 38–40.
E.O. Reischauer, Japan: The Story of a Nation, revised edition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974) 216–19.
Socrates’ arguments on this matter are nicely laid out and examined by N.E. Bowie and R.L. Simon, The Individual and the Political Order (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1977) 234–7.
The legal scholars John Austin and John Chipman Gray make this claim. See ‘John Austin: A Positivist Conception of Law’, 35–6 and ‘John Chipman Gray: A Realist Conception of Law’, 44–5 in J. Feinberg and H. Gross (eds) Philosophy of Law, 2nd edn (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1980).
The turmoil and shifts of personnel and policy which followed the success of the Sandinista revolution are outlined in detail by Shirley Christian, Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family (New York: Random House, 1985) 98–112.
B. Ginsberg, The Captive Public (New York: Basic Books, 1986) 230–1. Ginsberg’s thesis is supported by a Gallup Poll of 1977–8, which shows that three-quarters of the adults interviewed had at least some confidence in Congress and the Supreme Court, a higher percentage of approval than they gave to large business concerns (about two-thirds).
The Gallup Opinion Index, Religion in America 1977–78 (Princeton: American Institute of Public Opinion).
Merrill Jensen points out that there was less than unanimous support for independence in 1776, and it was not altogether clear that all colonies would support the Declaration of Independence. The Founding of a Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968) 667–704.
Robert Middlekauff notes that of the population of 2,500,000 at the time of the Revolution (p. 32), only 200,000 men actually served in the Continental Army or the various militias (p. 547), while 500,000 colonists remained loyal to Great Britian throughout the war (pp. 549–50). The Glorious Cause (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982). Another scholar states, ‘The Revolution was in some respects a civil war — protracted hostilities between irreconcilably antagonistic segments of society within the same country’, and notes that approximately 19,000 colonists served actively in some 42 loyalist provincial corps.
R.M. Calhoun, The Loyalists in Revolutionary America 1760–1781 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973) 502.
In part this realization is the basis of the view that it is necessary to introduce bills of rights into the constitutions of nations — to delimit the sphere which must be protected from majority interference. This idea has played a central role in the constitutional philosophy of Judge Robert Bork, among others. ‘Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems’, Indiana Law Journal, 47 (Fall 1971) 1–37
‘Styles in Constitutional Theory’, South Texas Law Journal, 26 (1985) 383–95. The argument of the present work, however, is that it may not be sufficient to have restraints on majority will within a constitutional structure; but may be necessary to restrain majority will in the very choice of government itself.
H. Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and US Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
Among the more balanced treatments of the CIA’s activities include R.L. Borosage and J. Marks (eds) The CIA File (New York: Grossman Pub., 1976).
Philip Agee presents a useful day-to-day description of the CIA’s activities in Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York: Stonehill Pub., 1975).
R.K. Ramazani, Revolutionary Iran (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986) 74–6
CM. Helms, Iraq (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1984) 185–94.
A. Sampson, Sovereign State: The Secret History of ITT (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973)
R. Sobel, ITT (New York: Truman Nalley Books-Times Books, 1982) 302–35 and 349.
J. Contreras and J. Whitmore, ‘Can Anyone Save Haiti?’, Newsweek, 108 (25 August 1986) 47.
John King Fairbank, for example, has forcefully argued that Mao and the government he established can only be fully understood by placing them in the context of the ancient patterns of Chinese history. ‘Numero Uno’, The New York Review of Books, 22 (1 May 1975) 18–20.
Aileen Kelly discusses some of the continuities between Tsarist Russia and Marxist Russia in ‘Russia’s Old New Right’, The New York Review of Books, 30 (17 February 1983) 34–7.
E. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, edited by T.H.D. Mahoney (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955) 196.
K. Rogai with R. Moreau, ‘The Youngest Martyrs’, Newsweek, 101 (21 March 1983) 51.
D. Hiro, Iran Under the Ayatollahs (London, Boston and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985).
A fine description of the very different attitude and perspective to law and its relation to ordinary citizens can be found in Harold J. Berman’s Justice in the USSR (New York: Vintage Books, 1963).
See, for example, S. Bialer, The Soviet Paradox (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986) 15–6
M.S. Shatz, Soviet Dissent in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) 157–8.
John Somerville presents an outraged analysis of the connection between military activity and the reflexive urge to participate, in ‘Patriotism and War’, Ethics, 91 (July 1981) 568–78.
See also S. Goode, The Foreign Policy Debate (New York: Franklin Watts, 1984) 30–2.
R.B. Cullen, ‘Soviet Jewry’, Foreign Affairs, 65 (Winter 1986/87) 252–66.
Aristotle, Politics, translated by E. Barker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962) 1.
R. Khomeini, Islam and Revolution, translated by H. Algar (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1981) 332. An American commentator notes:
J.W. Limbert, Iran (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987). See also, Ramazani, op. cit., 19–23.
B. Knei-Paz, The Social and Political Thought of Leon Trotsky (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978) 337–66.
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© 1990 Gerard Elfstrom
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Elfstrom, G. (1990). Sovereignty. In: Ethics for a Shrinking World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20500-4_4
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