The overriding challenge faced by policy-makers in the post–Cold War era is not, as many would have us believe, the achievement of integration of humanitarian action into the prevailing politico-military context. It is rather the protection of its independence. The debate, rather than focusing on fitting humanitarian action more snugly into the given political framework, should explore how to ensure the indispensable independence of humanitarian actors from that framework.

The experience of the Humanitarianism and War Project, an action-oriented research and publications initiative studying humanitarian activities in post–Cold War conflicts, suggests the essential elements of such independence. They include structural protection for humanitarian action against political conditionality; more sensitivity to local perceptions regarding humanitarian actors and action; tighter discipline within the humanitarian sector by those providing assistance and protection; increased attention to the origins of aid resources and of the personnel administering them; greater participation and ownership by local institutions and leaders in crisis countries; and an agreed overarching political framework that gives higher priority to human security.

The NATO-led intervention in Libya, Operation Unified Protector, is noteworthy for two central reasons. First, it is the first instance in over a decade of what Andrew Cottey calls “classical humanitarian intervention”—that is, humanitarian intervention that lacks the consent of the government of the target state, has a significant military and forcible element, and is undertaken by Western states. Not since the NATO intervention in 1999 to protect the Kosovar Albanians from ethnic cleansing has there been such an intervention. To be sure, since 2000 there have been some robust peace operations that fall in the gray area between classical humanitarian intervention and first-generation peacekeeping (such as MONUC, the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo). But, even if these operations were to some extent forcible, they had the consent of the government of the target state.

For at least the past several decades, judges around the world have been looking beyond their own states' jurisprudence to international law and the decisions of foreign courts in order to apply domestic law. This widespread practice is part of a phenomenon that Anne-Marie Slaughter calls “judicial globalization.” The American judiciary, however, has exhibited a distinct diffidence toward the use of comparative and international law to decide domestic cases, a diffidence that extends to many elected officials as well… .

Various defenses of the Supreme Court's reliance on international and comparative sources have been made, not least by some of the Supreme Court justices themselves. None of the defenses, however, have met the democratic objections head-on. Instead, justifications have mainly defended the general utility of referencing additional sources rather than the specific legitimacy of referencing sources from outside the U.S. legal system. The defenses to date fall short for at least two sets of reasons. They fail to grapple with legitimate concerns about the practice. In consequence, they offer no reasons for those opposed to this practice to reconsider their resistance.

Systematic killing has long been associated with some of the darkest episodes in human history. Increasingly, however, it is framed as a desirable outcome in war, particularly in the context of military AI and lethal autonomy. Autonomous weapons systems, defenders argue, will surpass humans not only militarily but also morally, enabling a more precise and dispassionate mode of violence, free of the emotion and uncertainty that too often weaken compliance with the rules and standards of war. We contest this framing. Drawing on the history of systematic killing, we argue that lethal autonomous weapons systems reproduce, and in some cases intensify, the moral challenges of the past. Autonomous violence incentivizes a moral devaluation of those targeted and erodes the moral agency of those who kill. Both outcomes imperil essential restraints on the use of military force.

In the middle of the 1980s the pastoralists of Essakane, Burkina Faso, were dying. Drought gripped the drylands of West Africa, crippling peoples' semi-nomadic livelihoods of millet farming and goat herding. When rain finally returned after three years, the earth had hardened like concrete and water skimmed across the floodplain, barely penetrating the surface. Without arable land the people faced famine—until they discovered gold. Instead of a disaster area, Essakane transformed into a commercial oasis: a mining town of 10,000 miners and traders where gold is processed and exchanged for food, cloth, spices, and animals.

Just war theorists who argue that war is morally justified under certain circumstances infer implicitly that establishing the military institutions needed to wage war is also morally justified. In this paper, I mount a case in favor of a standing military establishment: to the extent that going to war is a way to discharge duties to protect fellow citizens and distant strangers from grievous harms, we have a duty to set up the institutions that enable us to discharge that duty. I then respond to four objections drawn from Ned Dobos's recent book Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine.

Over the past seventy-five years, the UN secretary-general has come to occupy a highly visible position in world politics. While the UN Charter describes the post merely as the “chief administrative officer” of the organization, today it is widely recognized that the secretary-general also plays a central role in political matters. What makes the role of the UN secretary-general special? Where does the office's authority come from? As part of the special issue on “The United Nations at Seventy-Five: Looking Back to Look Forward,” this essay looks back at the tenures of previous UN secretaries-general and applies ideas from sociological institutionalism to argue that the UN secretary-general holds the position of a “guardian” of the UN Charter. The UN secretary-general, more than anyone else within the UN system, represents the UN overall. From this flows great responsibilities and challenges, as the UN secretary-general is often expected to step in when other parts of the UN are unable or unwilling to act, and to take the blame when things go wrong. But this special position also endows the office with a substantial degree of authority, which future holders of the office can use to shape policies and mobilize support as the UN seeks to address urgent global challenges.

Postmodern, poststructural, and critical theorists say that there are no universally valid foundations for norms. Whether or not we think that ethics exists in international life, or ought to, these theorists maintain that there are no firm grounds for any particular ethical belief. Rather, they argue, ethics is contextual.

Many, perhaps most, students of international ethics believe that such approaches have little to offer considerations of international ethics. Christopher Norris says postmodernists are nihilists: “Postmodernism is merely the most extreme (or as some would say, most consistent and consequent) version of this desire to have done with all truth-claims beyond what is presently and contingenty ‘good in the way of belief.‘” Ken Booth argues: “If one scratches a committed post-modernist one will almost certainly find a comfortably well-off Western urban liberal. Those who live against the wall, or who have emancipated themselves from such a position, do not hold these views.… The reason for this is obvious, and relates to the fact that post-modernism—certainly that of a doctrinaire variety—does not deliver an ethics for the emancipation of victims across the world.”

The classical realist world view places moral standards subservient to the power concerns of international actors. Realists did not make this valuation without some hesitation, as the issue of morality was addressed with seriousness and concern. The neo-realist thinking of today embraces with less hesitation the ultimate conclusion of the realist premises: statesmen never act according to moral precepts, thus such concerns need not be addressed by a political theory. Kegly argues the neo-idealist position that opposes this empirical observation: states consistently act according to values that are based on more than power concerns. Kegley's primary intent is to show that neo-realism ignores factors that influence international actors, and that a theory is needed that expands the notion of self-interest to include the moral sphere.

Now that the uproar provoked by the disclosure of the National Security Agency's (NSA) surveillance programs has lessened, and the main protagonists, Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, have had a chance to make the case for their actions, we are in a position to evaluate whether their disclosure and publication of communications intelligence was justified. To this end, this essay starts by clarifying the history, rationale, and efficacy of communications surveillance. Following this I weigh the arguments against surveillance, focusing in particular on the countervailing value of privacy. Next I explain why state secrecy makes it difficult for citizens and lawmakers to assess the balance that officials are striking between security and privacy. Finally, I turn to consider whether the confounding nature of state secrecy justifies Snowden's and Greenwald's actions. I conclude that their actions are unjustified because they treat privacy and transparency as trumps. Consequently, their actions embody a moral absolutism that disrespects the norms and procedures central to a constitutional democracy.

Imagine that you could wave a magic wand and provide everyone in the world with easy access to clean and affordable energy. In one stroke you would make the world a far cleaner, richer, fairer, and safer place. Suddenly, a billion and a half of the world's poorest people could discover what it is like to turn on an electric light in the evening. The looming threat posed by climate change would largely disappear. From the South China Sea to the Middle East to the Arctic, geopolitical tensions over energy resources would fade away. Human health would benefit, too, as vaccines and perishable foods could be refrigerated the world over. And many of the world's most corrupt government officials could no longer enrich themselves by bleeding their countries dry of revenues from fossil fuel sales.

On December 23, 1991, the Federal Republic of Germany announced its intention to proceed with unilateral diplomatic recognition of the secessionist Yugoslav states of Croatia and Slovenia, unquestionably one of the most precipitous acts in post-Cold War Europe. With it the Bonn government in effect renounced the legitimacy of the existing Yugoslav state and pressured other European governments to do the same. Within weeks the Yugoslav federation came apart at every seam, while its civil affairs degenerated into an anarchy of armed violence as convoluted in many respects as the Thirty Years' War.

In Germany's defense, it should be conceded at the outset that an alternative approach to recognition would not necessarily have produced a fundamentally more peaceful transformation of Yugoslavia. In light of the deepening political and economic cleavages with which the multinational state had been wrestling since the 1970s, the reasonable question is not whether the serial wars of the Yugoslav succession could have been avoided altogether, but whether Germany's action offered Yugoslavia and its populace the best chance for a more peaceful course of change given the circumstances. Did Bonn apply the best of its diplomatic and political brains to the issues of sovereignty, self-determination, and human rights? Were its actions morally responsible with regard to Balkan, German, and European history?

Weiss and Minear explore the problems associated with attempting to operationalize the evolving international humanitarian norm that civilians, regardless of location, are entitled to sustenance and medical assistance. In a host of recent civil wars in Africa, the attention of the international community has been drawn to the use of food deprivation by both governments and insurgents. The use of such deprivation has traditionally been part of the arsenals of warring factions, but the widespread and active mobilization of international public opinion against such tactics is relatively new. The authors argue that, while all historical situations are in some sense unique, Sudan is not so idiosyncratic that the lessons and the precedents cannot be replicated elsewhere to protect civilians caught between warring sides in civil wars.

At odds in 1987 were the philosophies of a United States grounded in political liberalism and a Soviet Union grounded in economic redistribution. While these principles may have defined these two nations' domestic policies and official international stances, Mazrui argues that the United States did little to propagate liberalism and the Soviet Union did little to encourage economic redistribution. Moreover, his critique seeks to reveal that each superpower's actions ultimately supported the other's philosophy. From this twist of intent and effect, Mazrui turns to the proclivity toward violence that the United States and the Soviet Union displayed in international affairs. Consequently, he calls into question the ethical justification of the means by which the superpowers repeatedly failed to accomplish their intended ends.

Krasner considers the decline of the global economic power the United States enjoyed from the 1940s through the 1960s and prescribes a policy of specific repricocity that aims not at restoring the country's postwar position but at allowing it to compete effectively in an emerging and changing economic climate. Specific repricocity focuses on short term pay-offs, outcomes, and differences in the domestic institutional arrangements of major economic partners. It aims at maintaining global stability while supporting the national best interest.

If global economic justice is to be achieved, debt crises must be assessed within the broader context of the international financial system. This system, which has been largely imposed by a small group of powerful financial agents in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, has led to instability and recurrent financial crises that have severely harmed the interests of poor countries and their people. Responsibility for bearing the costs of debt crises and other negative effects of the prevailing international financial system should therefore be assumed by those who have contributed to bringing them about. At present, however, the burden of economic “adjustments” during debt crises has fallen disproportionately on poor debtor nations, and debates regarding debt management have been dominated by individual, corporate, and official creditors. This essay presents the case for institutional reforms that can better protect the human rights of citizens of sovereign debtor nations during debt crises.

Why, despite well-established and well-publicized intergovernmental processes that date back to the early 1970s, have we been unable to put in place effective mechanisms to combat climate change? Why, despite the existence of extensive global human rights machinery, do we live in a world where mass kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder continue to blight the lives of so many? Why, despite a great deal of effort on the part of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and nonstate actors, have we been unable to make much of a difference to the lives of the ultra-poor and attenuate the very worst aspects of growing global inequalities? Most fundamentally, why have the current international system and the outcomes that it has produced remained so inadequate in the postwar period?