There are many discussions of ethics and international affairs written from within a particular tradition like political realism or natural law. There are also many books and articles that deal with particular international issues, like military intervention or global justice. But there is no general work that teachers, students, and others interested in international affairs can consult to orient themselves to the full diversity of the major traditions of inquiry and debate concerning the ethics of international relations. The contributors to this book have worked together with the hope that a comprehensive and systematic study of how these ethical traditions approach the basic questions of international relations would help to clarify the disagreements and misunderstandings that characterize current discussions of international ethics.

While no volume short of an encyclopedia could cover the entire range of ethical thinking about international affairs, most of the important voices in the continuing debate on this subject are represented here. The most obvious omissions are the traditions of Islamic, Chinese, and other non-Western civilizations. We did not attempt to examine these partly because the debate about international ethics for many years has been so decisively shaped by Western ideas, partly because we were afraid to take on a task so obviously beyond our abilities. The result is a gap which we hope others will be able to fill in coming years.

Our aim was to produce a basic reference work on international ethics, rather than a collection of individual essays.