119
3.3 A Denial of Reality, an Embrace of Injustice
Great harms often bring calls for great peace—for the unity of mankind. When
President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, he highlighted America’s
national purpose that all people are created equal, and that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” (U.S. President
Lincoln 1863). We are in a period of great harm now, and before we can look into
how we call for great peace, we must understand the root causes of this harm. Are
our current state and global governance bodies “of the people, by the people, for the
people”; and if it is not, is this why we are perishing from the Earth?
Kant believed that a pacific federation (foedus pacificum) among states could
seek to end all wars, as opposed to a peace treaty that may end one war (“which are
actually only truces”), and from there an international state (cevitas gentium) would
“continue to grow until it embraced all the peoples of the Earth” (Kant 2009).
However, he saw that it was not yet the will of the states to adopt a world republic,
or a “cosmopolitan constitution,” and so, “they reject in hypothesi what is true in
thesi” (Kant 2009).
“The issue of borders is as much a moral question as it is one of policy calculation” and states have effectively set arbitrary lines to defend acts of aggression or
allow for inaction (Smith 2017). Borders may exist to define nations and protect
citizens from outside harms, but borders are also used to deny the extraterritoriality
of harms or to deny refugees. Why does an artificially-made disconnect with our
neighbors make harm tolerable or justifiable? We must “look for alternatives for the
sake of the West’s own moral and legal integrity” (Smith 2017).
Authoritarianism is “the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom; a lack of concern for the wishes or opinions
of others”.
2
After the U.S. pulled out of the Climate Change Accord, and before they
pulled out of the Human Rights Council, they were attacking the very norms of
relational, global governance. Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley
stated “…there are multiple things that we have gotten out of… that were beneficial
to other countries but not to us: the Paris Climate agreement, we got out. The Iran
deal, we’ve gotten out of. UNESCO was another one that we got out of. And so you
are seeing the efforts of defunding those things that are not helpful to us and that…
aren’t in the United States interest. And the Human Rights Council and the Office of
the Human Rights Commissioner we are going to make targeted cuts. If there are
certain things that are not beneficial to our interests…, we’re going to get out of it”
(Speech: Nikki Haley 2018).
Is statist sovereignty to global governance as authoritarianism is to national governance? In global governance, with no enforceable justice system, are states saying
that harm to the “other,” the non-citizen, is simply allowed? We see this in the
2 Authoritarianism, defined. Oxford Dictionaries. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/
authoritarian [Accessed 2018-11-10].
State Global Responsibility for Environmental Crises: The Ethical and Legal…
3.3 A Denial of Reality, an Embrace of Injustice
Great harms often bring calls for great peace—for the unity of mankind. When
President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, he highlighted America’s
national purpose that all people are created equal, and that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” (U.S. President
Lincoln 1863). We are in a period of great harm now, and before we can look into
how we call for great peace, we must understand the root causes of this harm. Are
our current state and global governance bodies “of the people, by the people, for the
people”; and if it is not, is this why we are perishing from the Earth?
Kant believed that a pacific federation (foedus pacificum) among states could
seek to end all wars, as opposed to a peace treaty that may end one war (“which are
actually only truces”), and from there an international state (cevitas gentium) would
“continue to grow until it embraced all the peoples of the Earth” (Kant 2009).
However, he saw that it was not yet the will of the states to adopt a world republic,
or a “cosmopolitan constitution,” and so, “they reject in hypothesi what is true in
thesi” (Kant 2009).
“The issue of borders is as much a moral question as it is one of policy calculation” and states have effectively set arbitrary lines to defend acts of aggression or
allow for inaction (Smith 2017). Borders may exist to define nations and protect
citizens from outside harms, but borders are also used to deny the extraterritoriality
of harms or to deny refugees. Why does an artificially-made disconnect with our
neighbors make harm tolerable or justifiable? We must “look for alternatives for the
sake of the West’s own moral and legal integrity” (Smith 2017).
Authoritarianism is “the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom; a lack of concern for the wishes or opinions
of others”.
2
After the U.S. pulled out of the Climate Change Accord, and before they
pulled out of the Human Rights Council, they were attacking the very norms of
relational, global governance. Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley
stated “…there are multiple things that we have gotten out of… that were beneficial
to other countries but not to us: the Paris Climate agreement, we got out. The Iran
deal, we’ve gotten out of. UNESCO was another one that we got out of. And so you
are seeing the efforts of defunding those things that are not helpful to us and that…
aren’t in the United States interest. And the Human Rights Council and the Office of
the Human Rights Commissioner we are going to make targeted cuts. If there are
certain things that are not beneficial to our interests…, we’re going to get out of it”
(Speech: Nikki Haley 2018).
Is statist sovereignty to global governance as authoritarianism is to national governance? In global governance, with no enforceable justice system, are states saying
that harm to the “other,” the non-citizen, is simply allowed? We see this in the
2 Authoritarianism, defined. Oxford Dictionaries. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/
authoritarian [Accessed 2018-11-10].
State Global Responsibility for Environmental Crises: The Ethical and Legal…