What lessons should policy makers, particularly those at United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York and those of the Clinton administration in Washington, be taking away from the military, humanitarian, and diplomatic dilemmas in the former Yugoslavia? Specifically, what have we learned about moral choice as it pertains to recent UN activities? What in fact are the moral choices, and how might they be framed by those in power to make decisions?

Should United Nations forces step up their efforts to pacify Mogadishu or should they pull out of Somalia altogether? Does the international community have the right (or the obligation) to force Haiti's military rulers to relinquish their grip on power, and how much suffering should we he willing to inflict upon that country's already impoverished people to accomplish that goal? Should the outside world intervene militarily to stop the carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Angola, Burundi, or Nagorno-Karabakh? If so, who should intervene? How?

Just as Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes became etched into the minds of international relations scholars as the oracles of realpolitik during the Cold War, Immanuel Kant appears to be well on his way to becoming the prophet of “progressive international reform” in the post—Cold War era. Not only has Kant's thought provided the underpinnings of one of the major traditions of international law, but there is a groundswell of interest among international relations scholars today in the question of whether contemporary events, particularly the proliferation of republican states and attempts to create them, signal the march forward to the Kantian ideal of republican peace. Yet, prior to asking what contemporary events signify for the attainment of the Kantian ideal, we should analyze the conflicting interpretions fo Kantian political thought so as to understand the meaning and implications of the ideal itself. Such a task is not merely pedantie—it is necessary to determine the utility of political philosophy for providing understanding and guidance in the real world.

A recent front-page story in the New York Times—“Study Says Haiti Sanctions Kill Up to a 1,000 Children a Month”—draws attention to a vexing ethical problem: Under what circumstances can it be morally justifiable for the international community to apply economic sanctions that wreak serious hardship on civilians in the target state? Even though follow-up reports suggested that the headline might have to overstated the damage actually attributable to the Haitian sanctions, there can be little doubt that current sanctions programs entail at least the potential for a severe degree of civilian harm, to the point of triggering difficult moral issues.

Concerns beyond borders was not a new idea in 1919 when the League of Nations became the institutional guardian of such concerns. The freedom of action implied in the concept of sovereignty had always been subject, at least in theory, to the restraint of judgment by some external standard such as divine or natural law. In the system of international protection administered by the League, a number of standards external to the sovereign state were given explicit formulation and put on a contract basis in treaties and in the League Covenant itself. The standards were not universal in application. They were to be applied only in mandated territories and in states bound by specific minority treaties. Within those geographic limits the standards were detailed and non-negotiable. They concerned civil and political rights, equal protection before the law, religious freedom, economic development, and protection from exploitation. How well did this system of protection function? What was the League of Nations able to do in the twenty years between two world wars when it was responsible for the maintenance of these international norms?

The 1993 World Human Rights Conference, only the second UN-sponsored global conference on human rights ever held, provides an appropriate occasion to reflect on the state of the study of international human rights. The first global human rights conference, held in Tehran in 1968, came on the heels of the rise of the Third World to a position of international prominence. The Tehran Conference helped to initiate an era in which issues of economic, social, and cultural rights and development received steadily increasing attention in international human rights discussions. The 1993 Vienna Conference reflected the new international context characterized by the end of the Cold War and the global trend toward political liberalization and democratization. Substantively, the Vienna Conference was perhaps most notable for its emphasis on the university of international human rights—an emphasis, as I will argue below, that is reflected in the development of the academic human rights literature as well.

The “sexiest acronym in international diplomacy.” Such was a Washington pandit's roguish, if appropriate, characterization of the CSCE (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe) just a few of years ago in 1990 after it critically helped ignite the revolutions in Eastern Europe and torpedo the Berlin Wall. Other, more serious, foreign affairs analysts were equally enthusiastic about CSCE. A prominent commentator called it the “premier post-Cold War political forum.”

In the five years since the collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe, there has been a major shift in the way in which development aid is conceived and discussed in the aid agencies and foreign affairs ministries of the donor nations. There is a new agenda, the “ new political conditionality ” or “good government ” agenda. Formally, at least, aid increasingly is being tied to the practice of “good government ” as defined by the aid donors. Aid projects are now being justified in terms of their contribution to this god. More significantly, the practice of good government by recipients is becoming a general condition for eligibility for aid. The coercion of the Kenyan government into holding general elections in December 1992 has been the most vivid and publicized example of such practice to date, It is widely believed that there have been several other instances recently where aid donors, generally acting more covertly than in the Kenyan case, have had a major influence on the constitution of African governments.

It is one of the striking phenomena in discussions of the interplay between ethics and international relations that there continue to be a good many —including those with a strong interest in moral philosophy —who remain doubtful about whether it is really possible to define a “moral ” leader. They quest ion whether there is any objective basis for a comparative evaluation of the ethical standards of one statesman as opposed to another, except insofar as their basic goals may be described as good or evil; for example, Churchill and Roosevelt in World War II compared to Adolf Hitler.

Most of the significant philosophies of history, ” Pitirim Sorokin observed, and “most of the intelligible interpretations of historical events…have…appeared either in periods of serious crisis, catastrophe, and transitional disintegration, or immediately More or alter such periods.” The twentieth century has been an age of continuing crisis in world politics. In terms of lives sacrificed to political idols, our century, in almost every interpretation, has been a profound catastrophe. This century's last decade is indeed a time of transitional disintegration.