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.

Imagine that a neighboring state drafts an army of ignorant soldiers, makes them falsely believe that your state poses an imminent threat to their survival or political independence, and then launches them across your border. As a soldier, would you have a right to kill such attackers in self-defense or in defense of your country? In this brief comment, I will focus primarily on the question of whether one may kill “innocent attackers,” that is, individuals who pose a lethal threat through no moral fault of their own, but because they are acting under a combination of duress and nonculpable ignorance.

While useful proposals to reform International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have been widely discussed, the lack of meaningful financial accountability has received little attention. Considering the substantial damage done by IFIs, this is surprising both from an ethical and an economist's point of view. In a market economy anyone must face the economic consequences of their actions and decisions. If consultants give advice negligently or without obeying minimal professional standards, they have to pay compensation for the damage they have caused. National liability and tort laws serve the purpose of compensating those suffering unlawful damages and of deterring such behavior. By contrast, tortious damage caused by IFIs must be paid by IFIs' borrowers, including many of the world's poorest people. IFIs may even gain financially from their own negligence by extending new loans necessary to repair damages done by their prior loans. One failed adjustment program calls for the next. This mechanism makes IFI-flops generate IFI-jobs and additional income. This perverted incentive system rewarding errors, negligence, and even violations of the very constitutions of IFIs is absolutely at odds with the principles on which Western market economies rest. It must be brought to an end. This essay presents the idea of financial accountability, showing how easily reforms making IFIs financially accountable could be implemented. Moreover, embracing financial accountability would bring IFI operations closer to the intentions of their founders, who wanted IFIs subject to the basic legal and economic concepts of financial accountability not exempt from it. The market mechanism and its beneficial incentive system must finally be brought to IFIs.

In War and Self-Defense David Rodin uncovers many flaws of current thinking about war. Rodin correctly points out that the justification of national self-defense goes beyond the justification of individual self-defense. He accurately rejects the standard notion of moral symmetry—the accepted view that both just and unjust warriors can permissibly kill enemies as long as they observe the laws of war. Rodin vindicates the right view: if a war is unjust, each and every injury caused by the unjust warrior is a criminal act. There are no morally justified killings by those who fight unjust wars. Further, Rodin rightly rejects various holistic theories of self-defense. Last but not least, he correctly denounces what I have called the Hegelian Myth, the idea that tyrannical governments are worth defending against interventions aimed at deposing them because they are protected by the principle of sovereignty.

Articulating and examining the likely consequences of different theoretical and policy approaches to economic justice serves to highlight potential trade-offs and conflicts among them, and helps us to think more carefully about these trade-offs and what their consequences might be. Some of us, for example, might support a liberal free trade regime because we believe it promotes greater income equality among countries. But we might also reasonably assert that such a regime exacerbates economic injustices within some countries by causing dislocation and unemployment, particularly among vulnerable socioeconomic groups such as unskilled workers. This essay presents three models that seek to capture some of the central normative concerns that have been expressed by critics of economic globalization-communitarian, liberal internationalist, and cosmopolitan prioritarian. I indicate the kinds of economic models and data sets that are relevant to determining whether and to what extent greater openness to global trade poses a threat to economic justice as conceived by each of these approaches. Specifically, I use these analytical tools in order to relate changes in openness to foreign trade to other social and economic outcomes, particularly changes in income inequality and poverty, which have tended to draw the attention of nearly all theorists of economic justice. I characterize and critique the approach to economic justice that has been (implicitly) adopted by the major international institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization. I conclude with some policy implications and suggestions for further research in the area of international economic justice.

In War and Self-Defense I attempt to generate a dilemma for the just war theory by arguing that the right of national defense cannot be reduced to personal rights of self-defense, nor can it be explained through an analogy with them. Jeff McMahan, David Mapel, and Fernando Tesón doubt this conclusion. In response I argue, first, that their objections are not as opposed to my basic project as they may at first appear. This is because they are premised on a conception of national defense that differs substantially from mainstream just war theory and international law. Second, I argue that McMahan's and Mapel's defense of the reductive argument is unconvincing because (among other things) it is premised on an inadequate view of the norm of proportionality. On the other hand Tesón's defense of the analogical view, based on a conception of the moral value of the just institutions of a legitimate state, cannot account for certain basic features of the international legal and moral order. These include the presumption that even unjust states can possess the right of self-defense against aggression and that it is impermissible for one just state to conquer and rule another just state. Finally I argue that the attempt to bolster the right of national defense through the concept of punishment is inappropriate because it ignores the crucial requirement for proper moral authority in the agent of punishment.

Tzvetan Todorov's book, originally published in 2000 in French and now available in a superb translation, paused at the end of a violent century to attempt to assess-as the title and subtitle suggest-how to remember it and what lessons to learn. A contemporary figure in the long tradition of French-speaking moralists, Todorov writes beautifully and with ethical passion about some of the darkest crimes in humanity's recent history. For Todorov, these crimes are not just past: reflecting on them can provide guidance for contemporary international affairs, such as NATO's intervention in Kosovo or the current war on terrorism. Todorov's basic theses are two: first, totalitarianism counts as the primary novelty of the twentieth century and has to be the basis for moral reflection about it; second, there is a proper manner of response to totalitarianism, which consists of the defense of a democratic and pluralistic alternative politics, one that reacts to the disasters of the past with moral vigilance in the present.

… Many in France since the mid-1970s have adopted the concept of “totalitarianism”-much criticized elsewhere-to refer to the new alternatives to democratic rule-fascist and communist-thrown up by the twentieth century. … Todorov is intervening in a characteristically French debate in which the distinction of the regimes from one another has become part of a much larger ideological dispute and therefore freighted with heavy implications.

What implications? For of course, it is hard to gainsay Todorov's argument that it is necessary for the experience of politically evil regimes to be at the heart of moral reflection today. Even so, Todorov's book illustrates some of the difficulties toward which such a commitment can lead….