Die Idee einer wohlgeordneten Staatengemeinschaft

Abstract

Do criteria of moral right and wrong also apply to the relations between states? Is it possible to speak of justice also in international politics? The realist will remain sceptical: Power not morality governs the relations between states. The relativistic communitarian would point to the right to self-determination: International justice is to be limited to the principle of mutual non-intervention. The universalist globalist, finally, would refuse to recognize states as original and irreducible subjects of rights: International justice may only be realized in a world state. The present essay replies to this threefold challenge with an idea of a well-ordered community of states. It is inspired by and follows critically the recent extension of John Rawls's Theory of Justice to the Law of Peoples and provides a contractualist foundation of a conception of international justice. This conception neither takes the boundaries of states as absolutely impenetrable to moral judgment, nor does it demand the dissolution of the plurality of separate and sovereign states in a global political unit. As far as its content is concerned, it specifies three mutually complementary principles of the recognition of human rights, of reciprocal help in emergencies, and the right to self-determination. The well-ordered community of states will achieve stability by the fact that all of its members commonly value external peace and internal freedom. And finally, the idea of a well-ordered community of states includes an answer to the question of how it relates to political reality and articulates a strategy of how it might be applied and realized in non-ideal circumstances.