In an article describing the bleak situation into which Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has placed his country, the author implicitly touches upon an important ethical dilemma faced by world leaders and those in charge of international legal IGOs such as the International Criminal Court (ICC). That is, does facing the very real possibility of international criminal prosecution create the perverse incentive that leaders will hang onto power (thereby making the situation in their countries even worse), and would it not be more beneficial for the people in that country if the international community were to give guarantees to corrupt and criminal leaders that they will be left alone?

Here is a quick introduction to the issue dividing Africa and the West:

WESTERN dignitaries attending festivities to mark a decade of South Africa’s democracy on April 27, 2004, were struck mute by the deafening applause that greeted Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe.

“I cannot figure out why he is being applauded when he has destroyed his country,” protested Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister and president of the Western think tank, the International Crisis Group.

Mr. Mugabe remains both an enigma and a magnet, attracting Africans and repelling the West. He is at the center of a seven-year-old game of brinkmanship between Africa and the West, fostered by diametrically opposed responses to Zimbabwe’s seizure of land owned by some 4,500 white farmers in 2000. Since then, the two sides have looked each other in the eye to see who would blink first…

Here is the crux of the moral issue. This is one of those paradigmatic moral dilemmas, which comes down to a consequentialist versus a deontological argument. What would you recommend?

Moreover, the trial of Liberia’s warlord, Charles Taylor, in 2006 for crimes against humanity as part of the West’s war on impunity in Africa has removed guarantees for safe retirement, thus diminishing the chance of Mugabe’s exiting. He is running in the 2008 elections.

The United Nations new Secretary-General, Ban ki-Moon, has had an op-ed published [you may require registration to view the article] in The Washington Post today that addresses the situation in Darfur. The article refers to many of the ideas that we raised in class, with as especially intriguing implicit invocation of Homer-Dixon:

Nor is the crisis confined to Darfur. It has spilled over borders, destabilizing the region. Darfur is also an environmental crisis — a conflict that grew at least in part from desertification, ecological degradation and a scarcity of resources, foremost among them water.

Read the whole thing to get the Secretary-General’s accounts of the impressions he gained having visited the area for one week recently.

Professor Eric Reeves of Smith College has written a compelling op-ed piece in the Boston Globe wherein he addresses the current situation in Darfur:

DOES GENOCIDE continue in Darfur? Do we still see “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, [Darfur's African ethnic groups] as such,” the high standard set by the 1948 UN Genocide Convention? The question acquires urgency as skepticism grows in some quarters about the intentions of Khartoum’s Islamist regime. Genocide is a crime of intent, not motive; if the intention of Khartoum is no longer genocidal, their moral and negotiating equities change considerably in any peace talks with fractious rebel groups.

Thus, there can be a situation in which the motive to commit genocide no longer exists, or is no longer active, but the intent to commit genocide still operates. The rest of Reed’s article helps explain this crucial distinction.

Is making a person stand barefooted on a prison floor during winter torture? Alexander Herzen, who played a role in the emancipation of Russian serfs in the mid 1800s certainly seemed to think so. Writing in 1830, Herzen says:

“Peter the Third abolished the torture-chamber, and the Russian star chamber. Catherine the Second abolished torture. Alexander the First abolished it over again. Evidence given under torture is legally inadmissible, and any magistrate applying torture is himself liable to prosecution and severe punishment.
That is so: and all over Russia, from the Bering Straits to the Crimea, men suffer torture. When flogging is unsafe, other means are used – intolerable heat, thirst, salt food; in Moscow the police made a prisoner stand barefooted on an iron floor, at a time of intense frost; the man died in a hospital,”

Peter Singer, the utilitarian Professor of bioethics at Princeton University has written about whether the use of performance-enhancing drugs in athletic competitions is immoral. Given what you know about Singer’s work, what do you think his position on that important moral question would be?

Here’s a snippet:

At the elite level, the difference between being a champion and an also-ran is so minuscule, yet it matters so much that athletes are pressured to do whatever they can to gain the slightest edge over their competitors. It is reasonable to suspect that gold medals now go not to those who are drug-free, but to those who most successfully refine their drug use for maximum enhancement without detection.

As events like the Tour de France turn farcical, bioethics professor Julian Savulescu has offered a radical solution. Savulescu, who directs the Uehiro Center for Practical Ethics at Oxford University and holds degrees in both medicine and bioethics, says that we should drop the ban on performance-enhancing drugs, and allow athletes to take whatever they want, as long as it is safe for them to do so.

The rainy season is on the horizon in east Africa and with the Darfur conflict spreading, the NGO Nothing but Nets estimates that up to 25% of Chadian refugees could die from malaria this rainy season. What can you do to help? Here’s a post from the blog Firedoglake that will give you more information:

A while back, Mr. ReddHedd and I donated a hundred dollars to an organization called Nothing But Nets. It’s a group that funds the purchase of insecticide-treated nets to be sent to folks in areas where malaria is an ever-present danger — because these nets can mean the difference between life or death for children in some of these areas.

Each year, more than one million people die of malaria. Think about that for a moment: more than one million people.

This group buys a $10 net with each $10 donation, and teaches families how to use it for the prevention of malaria. This can make a concrete and tangible difference — immediately — in their lives. When we talked about making a donation, we were struck by the simplicity and the elegance of this — a simple net, for $10, can save a life. Literally save a life.

From the Nothing but Nets website, they have a report on humanitarian/fundraising work being done by the Chicago Bulls’ Luol Deng:

It’s incredible. Just four weeks ago I was with the United Nations Foundation and Luol Deng of the Chicago Bulls making an emergency appeal for nets to cover more than 200,000 refugees in Chad. Without insecticide-treated nets, it was estimated that 25% of these refugees would die from malaria.

Thanks to your generous and immediate response, we have raised the funds needed for 40,000 nets – nets that will literally save lives. Our partners in Chad – UNHCR, UNICEF and MENTOR – are getting the life-saving nets that you have supplied to children and families in need. Stay tuned for reports from the refugee camps, but in the meantime, on behalf of the partners of the Nothing But Net campaign, THANK YOU.

Here’s an astounding article by Scott Horton in the latest issue of Harper’s magazine. In it, he describes an effort by the American Bar Association to lead Congress to become more assertive in denying this president the extreme degree of latitude he has taken (and been given by a complaisant Congress) in the area of torture and interrogation. Horton writes:

The Bush Administration has finally achieved something unprecedented. The organized bar–with a vote just one short of unanimity–has declared one of Bush’s executive orders illegal and vowed to seek Congressional action to override it. And psychologists appear poised to join their legal colleagues in an equally harsh denunciation. It’s about torture. Remember Bush’s claim, “We do not torture”? Except, of course, we do, and on Bush’s personal orders.

Horton quotes from a recent article by Jane Meyer in the New Yorker magazine, where she describes some of the tactics your government is using to detainees both here and abroad:

A former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the ‘takeout’ of prisoners as a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during which a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location. A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity searches and the frequent use of suppositories during the takeout of detainees, likened the treatment to ’sodomy.’ He said, ‘It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity. It breaks down someone’s sense of impenetrability. The interrogation became a process not just of getting information but of utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation.’ The former C.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed the prisoners naked, ‘because it’s demoralizing.’

Do Americans believe that the United States is doing enough good in the world? Is the US government spending enough money and exerting enough effort to combat global poverty and improve the health care of the world’s less fortunate? Are American voters more likely to support those candidates who are making international moral issues a priority in their foreign policy? have surveyed some Americans and come up with some revealing responses:The bipartisan research team of Peter D. Hart Research Associates and McLaughlin and Associates conducted a survey of likely voters in the New Hampshire Democratic and Republican primaries and here are some of the findings:

Nearly all Democrats (97%) and 70% of Republicans agree that America’s standing has suffered in recent years. In addition to a strong military, Democrats (91%) and Republicans (78%) agree that the United States also needs to improve diplomatic relations by doing more to help improve health, education and opportunities in the poorest countries around the world. Both Democrats (81%) and Republicans alike (70%) agree that reducing poverty, treating preventable diseases and improving education in poor countries around the world will help make the world safer and the United States more secure.

Remember that we have to be careful about generalizing to other Americans from the results of this survey of New Hampshire likely primary voters. Are residents of New Hampshire similar to other Americans in their views on this topic? Are likely primary voters different from other Americans in a manner that would affect the results above if the survey were aimed more broadly?

Here is another important finding from the survey:

Democrats and Republicans agree that America has a moral obligation as a compassionate nation to help the world’s poorest people through foreign assistance. More than nine in ten Democrats (93%) and 84% of Republicans agree that when millions of children around the world are dying from preventable diseases and hunger, we have a moral obligation to do what we can to help. Similarly, Democrats (90%) and Republicans (85%) agree that it is in keeping with the country’s values and our history of compassion to lead an effort to solve some of the most serious problems facing the world’s poorest people.

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Consider the following: you’re a fanatical supporter of a sports club that has a storied past, with a history of fantastic success on the field, but your club has, as a result of poor management and other issues, struggled recently to field a competitive team. Moreover, your most hated–and cross-town–rival has seemingly won every championship in sight over the last two decades.

Suppose, further, that the answer to your club’s dreams, in the form of a new owner with very deep pockets, who is committed to competing dollar-for-dollar and pound-for-pound with your rival suddenly appears on the scene. Prayers answered? Maybe. What if the owner’s money, though, is tainted?

The club at the heart of this issue is Manchester City, and the new Mr. Moneybags is former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who has been accused of, among other things selling his family’s shares in

one of Thailand’s biggest telecom groups, Shin Corp. The sale, which netted family members and others $1.9bn, angered many urban Thais, who complained that the family avoided paying tax and passed control of an important national asset to Singaporean investors.

My friend and fellow U. of Richmond professor, Thad Williamson, is a fervent Man City supporter and has set up a blog dedicated to covering the travails of the English Premiership’s newest owner and the moral issues attendant to that ownership. If you’re interested in the nexus between politics, morality, and sport, then go and have a look at Professor Willamson’s blog.

Update: Here is the stand of the renowned human rights NGO, Human Rights Watch, on the whole Thaksin-Manchester City issue:

In the case of Mr. Thaksin, we have condemned the coup that ousted Mr. Thaksin from power last September and continue to be critical of the military-backed government. However, our research and that of other credible organizations shows that Mr. Thaksin’s time in office from 2001 to 2006 was characterized by numerous extrajudicial executions, “disappearances,” illegal abductions, arbitrary detentions, torture and other mistreatment of persons in detention, and attacks on media freedoms.

Sounds like a real sweetheart.

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Former US ambassador to Angola, and vice president for multilateral affairs at the International Crisis Group (ICG), Donald Steinberg, has penned an opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor, reproduced here at the ICG website, urging the Bush Administration to “get on the right side of history” and join legislation put forward by Democratic leaders in Congress to “restrict or eliminate cluster bomblets.”

Steinberg writes:

n the 1990s, the United States did the diplomatic and humanitarian equivalent of shooting itself in the foot over the land mine issue. President Bill Clinton got the anti-land mine campaign moving when he went to the United Nations in 1994. Calling attention to the damage these weapons cause, he stated: “To end this carnage, the United States will seek a worldwide agreement as soon as possible to end the use of all antipersonnel land mines. The United States will lead a global effort to eliminate these terrible weapons and stop the enormous loss of human life.”

Three years later, we were on the outside looking in as the world celebrated the signature of the Ottawa Convention to ban antipersonnel land mines, now signed by every Western Hemisphere country except the US and Cuba, and every NATO member except the US.

Now Steinberg warns that the Bush administration is foolishly following in the Clinton administration’s footsteps, only this time the issue is cluster bombs, not land mines.
What are cluster bombs and why does Steinberg believe that there is a moral imperative to restrict or eliminate their use?

These weapons are dropped from or shot into the sky, separate into dozens of small bomblets, and explode on the enemy. But these weapons have such a wide and uncertain dispersal pattern that, when used in urban areas, they virtually assure that civilians will also be victims. And many bomblets – up to 40 percent in last summer’s fighting in Lebanon, for example – don’t explode on contact, and remain active on the ground after the conflict ends.

Some bomblets are shaped like soda cans; others look like shiny metal balls; and still others are painted an inviting orange. Curious children too often lose their limbs or lives picking them up. Even experienced demolition experts often lose their fight against these weapons: For example, among the first casualties in NATO’s Kosovo peacekeeping operations were experts trying to dismantle unexploded bomblets.

For more information regarding cluster bombs and the effort to have their use eradicated, see this article at the Council on Foreign Relations website. Here is a photograph of the sub-munitions that are contained within the cluster bomb.

As a personal aside, a friend of mine (who was working as a journalist for a Croatian newspaper at the time) was almost killed when one of hundreds of little bomblets exploded near him after a missile attack in the city of Zagreb in 1995. Shrapnel became embedded in his chest and his life was saved following emergency surgery.

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