Ethics and International Relations

Catalog description

This course offers an introduction to ethical issues in international relations. In it, we ask whether morality, as opposed to interests, should play any role in international affairs – and if so, which morality and what rules should apply, and what we should do in response to the challenges of war, violence, poverty, and environmental destruction. The course is organized in four parts. The first part provides a general introduction to ethical theory, followed by an examination of the major schools of thought regarding the possibility or impossibility of ethical conduct in international relations. The second part of the course focuses on ethical issues concerning the use of force, and examines the ethical problems of military force in places such as Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Myanmar, as well as at the questions of international terrorism and humanitarian intervention. The third part looks at issues of human rights, global distributive justice, and the global environment. A fourth section, to be fleshed out during the term, will examine “contemporary challenges” of international ethics in the Trump era. Taken as a whole, the aim of the course is to explore and debate the great moral dilemmas of our time, allowing each student to make her or his own informed, deliberate moral choices.