Provided that traditional jus ad bellum principles are fulfilled, military humanitarian intervention to stop large scale violations of human rights (such as genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes) is widely regarded as morally permissible. In cases of “supreme humanitarian emergency”, not only are the victims morally permitted to rebel, but other states are also permitted to militarily intervene. Things are different if the human rights violations in question fall short of supreme humanitarian emergency. Because of the importance of respecting (...) political self-determination, in cases of “ordinary oppression”, we normally think that rebellion might be permissible, but not military humanitarian intervention. Thus, according to the received view, the conditions for the permissibility of intervention coincide with the conditions for the permissibility of revolution in cases of supreme humanitarian emergency, but not in cases of ordinary oppression. In cases of ordinary oppression there is an asymmetry between the conditions for the permissibility of revolution and intervention (call this the Asymmetry View). Should we accept the Asymmetry View? I answer this question by outlining an account of political self-determination and by illustrating the complex role that this notion should play in discussing the morality of revolution and intervention. (shrink)

:Contemporary global governance is organized around an odd pairing: care and control. On the one hand, much of global governance is designed to reduce human suffering and improve human flourishing, with the important caveat that individuals should be allowed to decide for themselves how they want to live their lives. On the other hand, these global practices of care are also entangled with acts of control. Peacebuilding, public health, emergency aid, human rights, and development are expressions of this tension between (...) care and control. There is a concept that captures this tension: paternalism. Drawing on our moral intuitions, I argue that paternalism is the attempt by one actor to substitute his judgment for another actor's on the grounds that such an imposition will improve the welfare of the target actor. After discussing and defending this definition, I note how our unease with paternalism seems to grow as we scale up from the interpersonal to the international, which I argue owes to the evaporation of community and equality. After exploring the implications of this definition and distinguishing it from other forms of intervention, I consider how different elements of paternalism combine to generate different configurations. Specifically, I point to five dimensions that are most relevant for examining the paternalism found in contemporary global and humanitarian governance: the tools used to restrict another actor’s liberty ; the scope of the interference ; the purpose of the intervention ; the source of the paternalizer’s confidence ; and the mechanisms of accountability. These different elements often correlate historically, suggestive of two ideal types of global paternalism: strong and weak. Contemporary global and humanitarian governance is largely the weak variety: force is severely proscribed, interference is relatively restricted, the paternalizer’s confidence has epistemic roots, and accountability to local populations remains a noble but rarely practiced goal. I further speculate that a major reason for this difference is the effects of liberalism and rationalization. I use this taxonomy to suggest how two different global efforts to improve the lives of those peoples living in what were perceived to be unstable and illiberal territories — the civilizing missions of the nineteenth century and the peacebuilding operations of the post-Cold War period — exhibited different kinds of paternalism. I conclude by reflecting on the ethics of international paternalism. (shrink)

The concept of freedom as non-domination that is associated with neo-republican theory provides a guiding ideal in the global, not just the domestic arena, and does so even on the assumption that there will continue to be many distinct states. It argues for a world in which states do not dominate members of their own people and, considered as a corporate body, no people is dominated by other agencies: not by other states and not, for example, by any international agency (...) or multi-national corporation. This ideal is not only attractive in the abstract, it also supports a concrete range of sensible, if often radical international policies. (shrink)

[full article, abstract in English; only abstract in Lithuanian] This paper tackles Kant’s juridical arguments for criticizing European colonialist practices, taking into account some recent accounts of this issue given by Kant scholars as Ripstein, Cavallar, Flikschuh, Stilz and Vanhaute. First, I focus on Kant’s grounding of cosmopolitan union as a juridical requirement stemming of the systematic character of the rational doctrine of right. Second, I pay attention to Kant’s remarks about how the European nations ought to establish commercial relations (...) with other nations in the world and how they should approach non-state people. I draw the conclusion that Kant’s juridical-political writings should be consider as a forerunning corpus for furthering an anti-colonialist mind in the European philosophy of Enlightenment. (shrink)

Many existing defenses of group rights seem to rely on the notion of group freedom. To date, however, no adequate analysis of this notion has been offered. Group freedom is best understood in terms of processes of social categorization that are embedded in social mechanisms. Such processes often give rise to group-specific constraints and enablements. On the proposed social mechanism account, group rights are demands for group freedom. Even so, group rights often serve to eradicate individual unfreedom. Furthermore, generic measures (...) sometimes provide the most appropriate solution to a problem of group unfreedom. (shrink)

Provided that traditional jus ad bellum principles are fulfilled, military humanitarian intervention to stop large scale violations of human rights (such as genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes) is widely regarded as morally permissible. In cases of “supreme humanitarian emergency”, not only are the victims morally permitted to rebel, but other states are also permitted to militarily intervene. Things are different if the human rights violations in question fall short of supreme humanitarian emergency. Because of the importance of respecting (...) political self‐determination, in cases of “ordinary oppression”, we normally think that rebellion might be permissible, but not military humanitarian intervention. Thus, according to the received view, the conditions for the permissibility of intervention coincide with the conditions for the permissibility of revolution in cases of supreme humanitarian emergency, but not in cases of ordinary oppression. In cases of ordinary oppression there is an asymmetry between the conditions for the permissibility of revolution and intervention (call this the Asymmetry View). Should we accept the Asymmetry View? I answer this question by outlining an account of political self‐determination and by illustrating the complex role that this notion should play in discussing the morality of revolution and intervention. (shrink)

There is a tendency within the literature to decry Kant as either a proto-imperialist or as a proto-democrat in relation to his views on distant strangers. I here take an alternative view, arguing that Kant’s cosmopolitan morality is considerably more context-sensitive than is often assumed. More specifically, I argue that Kant’s encounter with American nomads on the final pages of his Doctrine of Right reflects a nuanced reading of European settlers’ requisite comportment towards them: Kant neither endorses a universal duty (...) of state entrance nor does he place nomads beyond all possible moral engagement with European settlers. (shrink)