ethics of foreign ethical sanctions concerns ... - mitras...

Ethics of War

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Ethics of Foreign Intervention• Foreign intervention involves the direct or indirect use of power to influence the affairs of other states.

• Intervention can be undertaken openly or covertly, individually or collectively and can involve relatively non-coercive actions such as propaganda and official condemnation or coercive measures such as economic sanc-tions to directly military intervention

• It is done for a variety of purposes – economic imperialism, countering prior inter-vention, promoting political objectives, pro-tecting human rights and fostering national security

• However, intervention has been mostly associated with moral cloud. Hence, it is necessary to examine morality of intervention

Morality of economic sanctions • Economic sanctions are particular type of tools in the statecraft to advance foreign policy goals of states. They are preferable to more coercive tools such as war

• Usually they involve – 1. Positive incentive i.e. carrot, designed to induce or reward desirable behaviour2. Negative sanctions i.e. stick, designed to punish state for undesirable behaviour

Are they effective ?

• Although economic “sticks” can no doubt affect the behaviour of foreign actors, economic coercion alone is not decisive• For one thing, foreign policy decision making is a multidimensional process that is subject to numerous domestic and interna-tional factors.• Inducing behavioural change is far more difficult against autocratic regimes

Ethical Concerns • According to some thinkers sanctions are indeed a form of violence

• Many thinkers says that they are morally dubious.

• For example : One of the most influen-tial anti-apartheid activist highlighted the morally problematic nature of economic sanc-tions because they imposed great hardship on poor blacks

• Before applying it must satisfy certain conditions

• the decision to intervene must he made with care, taking into account political, legal, and moral considerations

• One of the most important and innova-tive ideas to emerge in response to the sys-temic atrocities and human rights abuses of the 1990s is the notion of “responsibility to protect” (R2P)

• Humanitarian intervention must pass two tests – 1. Political test2. Ethical test