While I really enjoyed Nagel’s
discussion of Global justice, I found a few things confusing and troubling. His
discussion of current international institutions for global justice was one
such piece of his argument. While he highlights that such institutions lack the
political nature necessary for the coercive obligation that a recognition of
global justice beyond basic human rights implies, he highlights the UN Security
Council as a sort of exception. Nagel highlight’s the Security Council’s
empowerment to coercively enforce individuals as an exception to the global
trend, but also discounts it. He notes that it is “primarily a form of
collective self-defense exercised by traditional sovereign powers.” I see two
problems with this. The first being that I don’t find this to be true: while he
qualifies the claim by arguing that there is a movement towards preventing
domestic genocides, I (even though I tend to think it powerless and unable to
act) think it is wrong to say that the UN only serves the self-defensive
interests of powers like the US. Has a UN peace-keeping force ever been
deployed in the US? No.
My second
issue relates to genocide as his choice of example, and draws in his discussion
of negative and positive rights as they relate to human rights and obligations
to global justice. By highlighting genocide as an example, Nagel focuses on the
protection of a negative right, that to life, as one that we can be held
globally accountable for absent political connections. As he indicated earlier it is political
connections that create positive rights, voting, socioeconomic security, etc.,
but I wonder how he would call for the international community to respond to
something like the South African apartheid, the standing of Palestinians in
Israel, or even the status of women in the US before they were granted the
right to vote. All three situations, to varying degrees, seem to have inherent
injustice where one class of person is treated as a second-class citizen, yet
the denial of the right to vote and other positive rights seems to fall outside
Nagel baseline for human rights.
Campbell, to address your first point, the UN Security Council is very much below state sovereignty, as evidenced by the extreme caution exercised whenever a potential violation of sovereignty is discussed. Look at cases such as Libya and Syria, where even extreme instability and war (and in the case of Syria, a potent international threat) were not enough to convince China and Russia not to veto.
ReplyDeleteNo peacekeeping force has ever been deployed for the same reason no peacekeeping force will ever be deployed in China, Russia, France, or the UK (and their closest allies). In its most pessimistic reading, the UN is merely a forum for the perpetuation of global power by the superpowers, albeit wrapped in a prettier ribbon. The structure and demonstrated priorities of each P5 member state largely conform to this. While the Security Council nominally has the power to override sovereignty, self interest will ensure that this is only allowed in the most extreme cases. If the bar for international intervention becomes low enough, P5 states (primarily Russia and China) worry that the UN might be used as a vehicle for their invasion.
If anything I have to agree with Nagel on the point that the UN, when it matters most, is a relatively weak institution. This is by design, and is so because the UN is the strongest form an international organisation of its kind could take on currently. And while the UN on matters of security has served as a funnel for state power, on most other areas it has accentuated and encouraged the power of smaller member states and their interests. Thanks to the UN trade is freer, refugees safer, telecommunications standards standardised, development focused on holistic capabilities (Sen won that one), and international cooperation more the norm than ever before.
Hi Thomas and Campbell,
ReplyDeleteI also thought that he was being pretty shady concerning what he classified as a basic human right. To continue unpacking this relationship, he holds that within nation-states, claims to equality are important and legitimate, since individuals "are both putative joint authors of the coercively imposed system. and subject to its norms, i.e., expected to accept their authority even when the collective decision diverges from our personal preferences" (129). This, Nagel holds, creates a "special presumption against arbitrary inequalities in our treatment by the system" (129). This special relationship ensures equality better within an institution than outside of one, in a voluntary interaction with another state--no equality demanded. He goes on to use the example of immigration; immigration laws only are enforced among the nationals, and not other states, but that doesn't mean "one state may do anything whatever to the citizens of another" (130). It just entails that citizens of another are not bound by the laws, and they don't have to abide by discriminatory policies, and their interests aren't taken into account (130). But doesn't the fact that we can't do whatever we want with a citizen from another country appeal to some idea of human rights? He says that "it is sufficient justification to claim that the policies do not violate their prepolitical human rights," (130) but wouldn't every citizen's prepolitical human rights be inherently different, if their governments are guarantee different fundamental protections? Equality is certainly not realized to the fullest extent by all governments; isn't our conception of "prepolitical" human rights necessarily influenced by our guarantees within the Constitution? I guess this is an argument for cultural relativism, and how different conceptions of prepoltiical human rights would always arise and present issues for another nation's policies. Nagel is less than clear about what he holds to be the bare minimum. But yet, wouldn't his conception of the bare minimum of prepolitical human rights still be heavily influenced by his American identity?