Suchergebnisse

Ethical cosmopolitanism is conventionally taken to be a stance that requires an 'impartialist' point of view—a perspective above and beyond all particular ties and loyalties. Taking seriously the claims of those critics who counter that morality must have a 'particularist' starting-point, this article examines the viability of an alternative understanding of cosmopolitanism: 'embedded cosmopolitanism'. Using moral justifications for patriotism as points of contrast, it presents embedded cosmopolitanism as a position that recognises community membership as being morally constitutive, but challenges the common assumption that communities are necessarily bounded and territorially determinate.

Determining who, or indeed what, is to respond to prescriptions for action in cases of international crisis is a critical endeavor. Without such an allocation of responsibilities, calls to action–whether to protect the environment or to rescue distant strangers–lack specified agents, and, therefore, any meaningful indication of how they might be met. A fundamental step in arriving at this distribution of duties is identifying moral agents in international relations, or, in other words, identifying those bodies that can deliberate and act and thereby respond to ethical guidelines. Often, the most effective and relevant moral agents in international relations are not individuals but institutions. However, it is necessary to qualify any claim that institutions can bear duties in international relations. Not only must they possess capacities for decision-making and purposive action, they must also enjoy the conditions under which specific duties can be discharged. The importance of this latter stipulation can be usefully illustrated by examining the disparate circumstances within which states–those that exercise positive sovereignty and those that are sovereign only in name–are expected to act.

Cosmopolitanism has often been criticized because it appeals to a universal humanity & requires abandonment of all attachments to smaller units of identity such as family, ethnic group, or nation. This essay attempts to describe an "embedded cosmopolitanism" that seeks to expand the scope of moral concern while acknowledging the difficulty of eschewing cultural values & identities. It uses the case of the treatment of noncombatants in war to examine the potentials & difficulties of embedded cosmopolitanism. Ethical cosmopolitanism would support the prohibition of deliberately injuring or killing noncombatants from the standpoint of the commonly shared humanity of both soldiers & noncombatants. The realization of a commonly shared humanity has, on occasion, even convinced soldiers not to open fire on enemy soldiers. Embedded cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, would encourage the same result (eg, not killing noncombatants) based not on an imagined abstract universal humanity, but on some more narrowly defined & actually experienced commonality of identity. For example, many Europeans criticized the killing of civilians in conflicts in Yugoslavia & lamented that "Europe," not "humanity," is dying in Sarajevo. The chief drawback to such an approach is that if there are no overlapping communities on which to draw, the capacity for empathy is severely limited (illustrated, perhaps, by the general tendency of Europeans to be less concerned about massacres in Rwanda than those in Yugoslavia). K. W. Larsen

Abstract
In this article, we identify—and interrogate—one thematic thread that is intricately woven through prominent positions within classical realism, normative international relations (IR) theory, and what Zhang Feng (2012) has called Chinese IR's "Tsinghua approach." This thread is the often-controversial notion of a statist ethic for international politics or an ethical perspective that grants priority to one's state, fellow citizens, and the national interest. Positions within each of these theoretical traditions—what we label "egoistic realism" and "responsible realism" within the classical realist tradition, "communitarian realism" and "impartialist statism" within normative IR theory, and what others have described as "moral realism" within the Tsinghua approach—share a commitment to an ethical approach variously defined in terms of the protection of, and preference for, one's state and compatriots. We take this rich collection of positions, and the points of comparison that it affords, as an opportunity to better understand the possibilities and limits of a statist ethic for international politics. Specifically, we endeavour to illustrate four points: (1) that a morality defined in terms of the priority of the state, one's fellow citizens, and the national interest is neither impossible nor a contradiction in terms; (2) that such a perspective can constitute a sophisticated theoretical position; (3) that it can be conceived in radically different ways, including with respect to the source of value to which it appeals and who it deems to matter; and (4) that these differences have profound practical consequences. In terms of contributing to a conversation between Western and Chinese IR theory, this analysis helps us not only to explore how the "moral realism" of the Tsinghua approach relates to positions within classical realism and normative IR theory but also to evaluate the practical implications of its points of theoretical convergence and divergence.