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Humanitarian Intervention Essay

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Non-intervention has always been a commonly understood principle in international relations. However, a problem arises when a nation cannot protect the wellbeing of its own citizens against either internal or external forces. That is when the question of whether our ethical duties to others transcend the community of the nation-state arises. It is indeed difficult to answer as history has shown there often is no obvious benefit that comes from humanitarian intervention. This partly has something to do with the international consensus and the guiding principles currently in place for such action. This essay will argue the case that, as of today, our ethical duties is not a good enough reason for transcending the community of the nation-sate …show more content…

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the field of ethics can be defined as “the science of morals; the department of study concerned with the principles of human duty”. In international relations, it can be said that international ethics addresses the nature of duties across national boundaries, the way members of each community ought to treat ‘outsiders’ and ‘strangers’, and whether it is right to make such a distinction (Shapcott, p. 199). A range of difficult ethical problems, often seen as distinct from those in domestic political theory, arises with international political theory. However, two central questions which can be derived from this subject are whether outsiders should be treated with the same set of ethical duties as insiders, and, if so, how it can be done in a world where international anarchy and moral pluralism are the norm. For the sake of the argument, only the first question will be considered extensively in this essay. In order to understand our ethical duties across national boundaries, a particularly relevant distinction between the two principles of cosmopolitanism and communitarianism will be made. These two theories provide significantly different approaches to the moral significance that we have to the different communities and certain particular identities, as well as the questions of who matters and how much we should care for those outside our

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