[wordup] Rules for the World Stage

[Adam Shand]

Via: Brett Shand <brett at earthlight.co.nz>
From: http://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/nussbaum-grotius.html

Rules for the World Stage

By Martha Nussbaum
Newsday (New York)
April 20, 2003

There once was a noble vision of what the world of international 
relations can be. In recent weeks this vision, once nearly realized, has 
receded from view, so much so that we might forget that human beings 
ever had such a dream. The idea I have in mind is Hugo Grotius' concept 
of "international society": the notion that all human beings form part 
of a single moral community, regulated by binding ethical norms that 
constrain the actions of nations in pursuit of their own advantage.

Grotius (or Hugo de Groot), the founding father of international law, 
lived between 1583 and 1645. A child prodigy, he played a leading role 
in Dutch trade negotiations at the age of 15, and published books from 
that time onward. But he was also a man who stuck his neck out. 
Prevailing religious doctrine in the Netherlands held that human beings 
were not free to alter the course of their salvation by their own 
choices. Closely linked to this idea was a political belief that people 
had no right to give themselves laws, deciding how to conduct their own 
affairs.

Grotius was a great believer in choice and human freedom, and in the 
freedom of each state to make its own laws. For both of these beliefs, 
he was convicted of heresy and sent to prison in a gloomy castle. But he 
was permitted to receive books, which his wife would deliver and cart 
away in a large trunk. One day the outgoing trunk had an extra occupant: 
Grotius himself. He managed to get on a boat to France, where he spent 
the next five years in exile and wrote his great work, "On the Law of 
War and Peace."

The book has been hugely influential for many reasons: for its 
insistence that war is just only if it responds to a conspicuous and 
serious act of aggression; for its insistence that even then, the party 
in the wrong must be treated in accordance with strict moral laws; for 
its insistence that killing of innocent civilians is morally wrong, even 
though the formal international law of that time did permit it; for its 
insistence that a stable and moral peace should be the long-term goal of 
international relations.

But the work's greatest contribution lies in its conception of relations 
among states. For Grotius, each state has sovereignty: the right to give 
itself laws and control its destiny. This is not just a fact, but a 
moral norm that expresses something deep about human freedom, something 
for which Grotius himself was prepared to risk imprisonment and worse.

Second, however, the world contains interactions between nations, which 
are mediated not just by concerns for expediency and safety but by moral 
considerations. Moral laws bind all nations in their dealings with one 
another, whether these laws have been turned into enforceable 
international law or not. Why should this be? Because, third, the world 
contains, most fundamentally, individual human beings, who are needy and 
trying to flourish. The moral duties to support human well-being bind us 
all into what Grotius calls "international society."

The norms of this society begin with the idea of humans as creatures who 
are both rational and social, and who need to find a way to live 
together. Certain ways of behaving support that conception (for example, 
abiding by treaties that one has made), and others do not (killing 
civilians in wartime).

According to Grotius, then, when international law limits America in 
some of its plans, Americans are not wrong to feel constrained. But 
Grotius would insist that the more fundamental identity we have is as 
members of a moral world of human beings.

National sovereignty also is limited internally by morality. If a nation 
commits certain very bad acts against its own population, such as 
torture and mass murder, another nation may intervene - what we now call 
"humanitarian intervention" - to help the people. National sovereignty's 
importance derives from its value to people and their freedom; it cannot 
be invoked to justify genocide and torture.

Grotius was also a radical in his thought about material need. He saw 
that a lasting peace among nations requires thinking about how all 
citizens of the world can get the things they need to live. He held that 
when any person anywhere is in extreme need, that person has a right to 
food and other necessities of life (he explicitly mentions medical 
care). He even says that the needy person owns the surplus that the rich 
are squandering, if he needs it and they don't.

Grotius' vision was not the way the world was seen in his own day. But 
by insisting on the power of this vision he created a climate of opinion 
in which that vision increasingly became real. Although his contemporary 
Thomas Hobbes influentially developed the pre-Grotian idea that the 
realm between nations is one of force and interest only, Immanuel Kant 
in the 18th century sided with Grotius, envisaging a world that achieved 
lasting peace through a federation of nations. Such ideas eventually led 
to the United Nations and Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 
Although the UN treats nations as the major actors in international 
affairs, the human rights movement moves us closer to Grotius' picture 
of a world in which national boundaries are porous, and international 
agreements have at least some power to constrain nations.

Are these ideas still alive? The Bush administration treats such 
moralized visions with utter scorn, casting the United States as the 
Hobbesian sovereign needed to bring order to an amoral realm. This 
stance is deeply alien to America's founding traditions: Thomas Paine 
and other founders were steeped in the continental human rights 
tradition that had grown out of Grotius' ideas.

In the Grotian/Kantian vision, alliances among republican nations are 
crucial to lasting peace. In our current foreign policy, by contrast, 
even once-stable alliances are treated with contempt. The duty of 
wealthy nations to ensure that all humans have urgent needs met does not 
rank high on the agenda of any major politician or political party.

We shall see how effectively humanitarian aid is given in Iraq; the 
example of Afghanistan gives reason for skepticism. But the more 
important issue is that the United States has long lagged behind wealthy 
nations in the proportion of gross domestic product it designates for 
foreign aid, giving, for example, about one-tenth of Norway's share. The 
Grotian vision entails support for all urgent needs, not just those of a 
nation one has invaded.

For me, the events of the past weeks engender a powerful grief, grief 
for a hope that is dying. And yet, moral norms are not docile, 
submissive things. They do not quit the scene when people treat them 
with contempt. Instead, they call us to outrage and protest. Just as the 
leaders of the Civil Rights movement did not abandon their vision of 
human equality in the face of the contempt and scorn of white society, 
so those of us who care about the vision of international society that 
Grotius bequeathed to us should insist on that vision.

People in power may say that we are dealing with "rogue states" and must 
shape our thinking accordingly. Grotius had seen a side of human conduct 
that he called "bestial." He argued that in such a world it is all the 
more important to proclaim and abide by principles of which a decent 
society can be proud and to work tirelessly to produce a world in which 
such principles increasingly hold sway. He warned people in power that 
if they imitate wild beasts they may forget to be human.

Grotius' own life also takes its stand against the course of despairing 
detachment, a great temptation in this time as in his own. He 
conspicuously does not say, "These times are bestial, so we 
right-thinking people had better check out." Instead, living in exile, 
he created a norm of cooperation and moral order that continues to 
inspire, and to determine the course of some world events, even if not all.

Those of us who feel a deep moral sadness about the current conduct of 
the United States, as our leadership shows contempt for this vision of a 
multilateral world, could do worse than to follow Grotius' example. 
Moral norms do not cease to exist because current leaders do not believe 
in them. We may refine them and further develop them, in the hope that 
once again, sooner or later, their day will dawn.


Martha Nussbaum is professor of law and ethics at the University of 
Chicago Law School and author, most recently, of "Upheavals of Thought: 
The Intelligence of Emotions" and "For Love of Country?"

Copyright 2003 Newsday, Inc.