Volume 2, No. 4 (April, 1992) pp. 57-61

CODE OF PEACE: ETHICS AND SECURITY IN THE WORLD OF WARLORD STATES by Dorothy V. Jones, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)

Friedrich Kratochwil, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania

This is a curious book. It tackles a variety of topics of interest to international relations specialists, social theorists and people interested in international law and organization by focusing on the allegedly evolving "codes" of international politics. Staying primarily on the level of declarations, and taking legal documents and charters as evidence for what states consider "proper" behavior, Dorothy Jones argues that a consensus on ethical principles has evolved which can serve as the norma- tive foundation for peace in contemporary world politics.

This certainly surprising conclusion is largely due to the choice of a methodology. This choice allows Jones to skirt many of the important conceptual and methodological problems that have plagued similar previous treatises, as well as various approaches in social engineering and jurisprudence. After all, what IS the role of norms in international politics? Are they simple smoke- screens for basic interests or power, or do they have an indepen- dent impact in shaping the decisions of international actors? Can I infer consensus from the ritual re-recitation of princi- ples? Can I furthermore argue that these principles are "impor- tant" for decision-making simply because states say so.

Even if we limited our inquiry to the latter task, we would at least need a methodology which takes the questions of justify- ing policies seriously and which enables us to trace argumenta- tive strategies and processes. Jurisprudence and the theory of communicative action offer themselves as candidates for analyzing such problems. The revival of "political theory" (Held 1991), by focusing on the changes in the political discourse and the topics and metaphors through which we make sense of our political life, would be another way in which we can reflect upon the context of political actions and norms. But the author's choice of a simple straightforward historical narrative as a method fails to probe these questions or even suggest further avenues for examination.

The response to my objections could simply be that it is unfair "to beat up on a cat because she does not bark". If the author's goal was to record the different strands of "ethical thought" that were present at various junctures when "peace" was negotiated, then the "merging of concerns with conflict resolu- tion, standards of social justice, human rights guarantees and with the fundamental principles governing international life into a code" (see e.g. p. 22 and 155ff) establishes the parameters for telling a story with "evolutionary" overtones.

However, even if we adhere to sharing the optimism inherent in such a narrative, one sorely misses any reference to the literature which deals with the "limits of law" and with the preconditions that make legal

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processes effective means for conflict resolution. Some legal scholars have pointed out that the weakness of the international legal order is not due to the lack of "codes" or the pronounce- ment of principles, but to the lack of institutionalization of the world POLITICAL process (Kaplan and de Katz enbach 1961).

Furthermore, unless we want to be satisfied with a HISTORY OF IDEAS concerning a non-violent conduct of international affairs, we need a bit more than an account of peace conferences, efforts of codification and establishment of international organizations. The subtitle,"ethics and security in the world of warlord states" seems to suggest that the author was aware that she would have to cast the net wider. But again the reader is disappointed in his or her expectations. The issue of ethics remains entirely undeveloped. This does not mean that the problem of "ethics" has to be tackled in the same fashion as analytical philosophy. I, for one, was glad that the author took the problem of ethics as an issue of praxis seriously, rather than a priori speculation to which many more philosophically inclined treatises or "world order proposals" resort. It does mean, however, that the context of norm and action has to be more critically examined. Simply noting the "growth" in the number of declarations affirming normative concerns does not suffice.

Similarly, as some authors concerned with the practice of states in the post-war era have noted, the near universal accep- tance of sovereignty and self-determination as normative guide- posts has lead to a good deal of incoherence. As Robert Jackson (1990) points out, neither the choosing "self" nor the issue of "determination" has been successfully tackled by endowing former colonies with statehood in the absence of any further factual qualification for the exercise of sovereignty. The "self" of the new states is simply that of jurisdictional spheres which the colonial powers had once imposed and which, through the instru- ment of legal succession, becomes a subject in international law. "Determination" also becomes problematic because neither meaning- ful procedural safeguards for participation nor the protection of sub-national group rights exist.

These examples could be easily multiplied. Are democracy, human rights and peace really as compatible as the liberal vision makes us believe? The example of hard line "communists" becom- ing the spokesmen for certain groups and nationalities in the former Soviet Union (or Serbia) should give us some pause. Similarly, during the inter-war period, self-determination and the voice of the people was supposed to prevent war and hold their leaders accountable. This type of analysis stays on the level of normative declarations. What is missing is the question of institutions and their role in determining policies and outcomes. Thus listing nine basic and two auxiliary principles which states have agreed to and considering them part of an emerging "code" raises more questions than it answers.(1)

For example, the commitment (even if it existed at an appreciable level of seriousness) to an "equitable international economic order" might be quite at odds with the principle of "protecting the

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environment", as presumably the sharing of resources depends upon economic growth at the core (in order to create the surplus to be transferred to the periphery) as well as at the periphery. Thus given the contradictory implications of these two agreed upon principles both political praxis and its justification cannot be meaningfully appreciated at this level of abstraction.

Having criticized the work for what it is not (despite its own claims) it is nevertheless important to realize what this work can contribute to our understanding. If I had to character- ize it in one short sentence, I would say that it is a book on the developments in international law and international organiza- tions from the turn of the century to the l98Os. It is clearly written, well researched, and thus it is very informative and a pleasure to read.

The work is more of the genre of the "old" international law and organization treatises, which were in vogue before and immediately after the war, than it is akin to contemporary discussions on ethics and international affairs. The resemblance to books such as those by Charles Beitz (1979), Stanley Hoffmann (1981), Thomas Pogge (1989), or to jurisprudentially oriented works by Thomas Franck (1990), Terry Nardin (1983), Lea Brilmayer (1989), or to policy-oriented treatises by Myres McDougal (1966; McDougal and Lasswell 1966) or Richard Falk (1968), or even to articles in ETHICS AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, are more or less accidental.

One has indeed to wonder whether this book would not be better served by being marketed as one of the "law and organiza- tion" treatises, instead of being pressed into a category into which it does not quite fit. Of course, one could, in turn, object to such a pre-emption of the field by modern authors and insist that there is no reason why the term "ethics" should be reserved for such efforts. But since this argument is never explicitly made, the reader is justified in his disappointment since s/he could expect a different kind of book under this title.

Read as a record of the developments in the field of inter- national law and organization, the book serves an important function by making accessible to us a concise record of the works of many important international lawyers and thinkers who contem- plated the problem of international governance. There is much food for thought in these pages. However, today's analyst would be well advised to ruminate about these suggestions with more than the benefit of hindsight. It is necessary to carefully examine the reasons why these proposals were so easily derailed despite their impressive intellectual pedigree and careful elaboration.

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Notes

1. These nine principles are: a) sovereign equality of states b) territorial integrity and political independence c) equal rights and self-determination of peoples d) nonintervention in the internal affairs e) peaceful settlement of disputes f) abstention from the threat or use of force g) fulfillment in good faith of international obliga- tions h) cooperation with other states i) respect for human rights.

The two auxiliary principles are: creation of an equitable international economic order and the protection of the environ- ment.

References

Beitz, Charles. 1979. POLITICAL THEORY AND INTERNATIONAL RELA- TIONS. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Brilmayer, Lea. 1989. JUSTIFYING INTERNATIONAL ACTS. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Falk, Richard. 1968. LEGAL ORDER IN A VIOLENT WORLD. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Falk, Richard A. and Saul H. Mendlovitz, eds. 1966. THE STRATEGY OF WORLD ORDER 2: INTERNATIONAL LAW. New York: World Law Fund.

Franck, Thomas. 1990. THE POWER OF LEGITIMACY AMONG NATIONS. New York: Oxford University Press 1990.

Held, David. 1991. POLITICAL THEORY TODAY. Cambridge Eng.: Polity Press.

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Hoffmann, Stanley. 1981. DUTIES BEYOND BORDERS. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.

Jackson, Robert H. 1990. QUASI-STATES: SOVEREIGNTY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AND THE THIRD WORLD. Cambridge Eng.: Cambridge Univer- sity Press.

Kaplan, Morton and Nicholas de Katzenbach. 1961. THE POLITICAL FOUNDATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. New York: Wiley.

McDougal, Myres S. 1966. "Some Basic Concepts about International Law: A Policy-Oriented Framework of Inquiry." in Falk and Mendlovitz 1966.

McDougal, Myres S. and Harold D. Lasswell. 1966. "The Identifica- tion and Appraisal of Diverse Systems of Public Order." in Falk and Mendlovitz 1966.

Nardin, Terry. 1983. LAW, MORALITY AND THE RELATIONS OF STATES. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Pogge, Thomas. 1989. REALIZING RAWLS (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).