In soliciting these articles, the editors of Ethics & International Affairs asked authors to respond to several questions. First, preemptive and preventive uses of force are often justified by claiming either that there is substantial risk of a future attack or that it is difficult to ascertain how dangerous the target is. Under what conditions does the existence of risk and uncertainty about possible threats license the use of military force? Second, what consultative procedures should be required in order to legitimate the preventive or preemptive use of force? There exist both domestic and international institutions that constrain the use of military force, but which, if any, should be granted authority to block or authorize military actions of these kinds? Third, if preemptive or preventive military action is taken, what jus in bello criteria apply? Are there different and perhaps more stringent jus in bello criteria if states act preemptively?

In his address at West Point on June 1, 2002, President George W. Bush appeared to be signaling America's willingness to regard the mere possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by potential enemies as grounds for an anticipatory war. Historically, however, a clear distinction has been drawn between preemptive and preventive, or anticipatory, war, with the latter regarded as illegitimate. The National Security Strategy announced by the president on September 20, 2002, was more conventional in its approach to preemption, but doubts remain as to whether the old distinction can be preserved. And this discussion is taking place in the context of a specific problem, namely the apparent desire of Iraq to obtain WMD and the determination of the United States, and, less clearly expressed, the UN Security Council, to prevent this from happening.

It is unlikely that George W. Bush feels constrained by international law when deciding whether to use military force abroad. Nevertheless, many of the United States' allies are reluctant to cooperate with and participate in military actions that cannot reasonably be justified under international law. And supportive allies, while perhaps not strictly necessary to the United States in its recent and foreseeable military campaigns, do make the military option easier to pursue. A war against Iraq would be difficult without access to bases and airspace in countries as diverse as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Canada. For this reason, at least, it would seem to be worth the president's while to adhere to international law where possible and, where this is not possible, to seek to change the rules.

International lawyers in the Department of State, together with lawyers in other parts of the U.S. government, have excelled in shaping the law to accommodate the interests of the United States. One example, though by no means the only one, concerns the response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

It is unlikely that George W. Bush feels constrained by international law when deciding whether to use military force abroad. Nevertheless, many of the United States' allies are reluctant to cooperate with and participate in military actions that cannot reasonably be justified under international law. And supportive allies, while perhaps not strictly necessary to the United States in its recent and foreseeable military campaigns, do make the military option easier to pursue. A war against Iraq would be difficult without access to bases and airspace in countries as diverse as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Canada. For this reason, at least, it would seem to be worth the president's while to adhere to international law where possible and, where this is not possible, to seek to change the rules.

The debate over going to war in Iraq has in many quarters become a debate about the ethical implications of preemption and prevention rather than about the war itself. But neither prevention nor preemption can have any moral standing in the abstract, since it is the circumstances, not the concepts, that inform their qualities as strategies. The question, rather, is whether the decision to engage in a new war against the Iraqi regime is just.

Indeed, it is surprising to find that so much less has been said about basic principles of just war—that is, a just cause, a right intention, proportionality, and so on—than about the largely legal questions of preemption and prevention. But concepts like preemption and prevention are really about the timing and method of war; they say nothing about the moral content of the conflict itself, and in the end an emphasis on them obscures the fundamental question of justice. Put another way, if a particular military action, including launching war, is just and proper, then the means and scheduling are subject, like anything else, to scrutiny under the guidance of the principles of just war. But they are not separate questions in and of themselves.

The Bush administration's arguments in favor of a preemptive doctrine rest on the view that warfare has been transformed. As Colin Powell argues, “It's a different world … it's a new kind of threat.” And in several important respects, war has changed along the lines the administration suggests, although that transformation has been under way for at least the last ten to fifteen years. Unconventional adversaries prepared to wage unconventional war can conceal their movements, weapons, and immediate intentions and conduct devastating surprise attacks. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, though not widely dispersed, are more readily available than they were in the recent past. And the everyday infrastructure of the United States can be turned against it as were the planes the terrorists hijacked on September 11, 2001. Further, the administration argues that we face enemies who “reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands.” Although vulnerability could certainly be reduced in many ways, it is impossible to achieve complete invulnerability.

Contemporary debates over the appropriate balance of unilateralism and multilateralism in U.S. foreign policy reflect disagreements not simply about the practical effectiveness of these alternative options but also about their legitimacy. Advocates of multilateral and unilateral action alike tend to bundle prudential calculations with normative claims, making assessments about costs and benefits difficult to disentangle from ethical arguments about fairness, justice, morality and obligation. Greater clarity may be possible by classifying U.S. foreign policy into six analytical categories, based on whether the aims pursued are nationalist, internationalist, or cosmopolitan and the strategies adopted to realize them are unilateral or multilateral. Each set of aims has different ethical justifications that generate and help to explain divergent attitudes and judgments about the role of multilateral cooperation in U.S. foreign policy. The article sheds new light on alleged U.S. unilateralism, showing that the U.S. decision to go it alone–or to act with others–can be motivated by the desire to advance the narrow interests of the United States, to advance the interests of all states, or to advance the interests of humanity at large. The article suggests that purely nationalist policies, whether pursued through unilateral or multilateral means, will become increasingly untenable and illegitimate as world politics becomes institutionalized and as humanity becomes integrated, albeit slowly, into a single cosmopolitan community.

International organizations and bilateral donors often tie financial assistance to the undertaking of political and economic reforms–a practice known as conditionality. In recent years, the use of good governance conditionality has provoked controversy in the academic and policy worlds. So far, the issue of whether conditionality is effective in achieving compliance with good governance norms has occupied center stage in the debate. However, whether it is morally defensible to attach political conditions to financial assistance has largely been taken for granted.

This article explores the extent to which it is morally defensible to attach good governance conditions to aid and loans in international society. It argues that the use of conditionality should be limited for two reasons. First, there is an unavoidable tension between conditionality and rights to self-determination. Second, focusing on conditionality can obscure the fact that the rules of the international economy are no less contestable than the governance of individual states, and, in turn, are in just as great a need of reform. This leads to two main conclusions. First, the use of conditionality should now be rooted in a conception of basic rights and complemented by more equitable rules in the global economy. Second, the attempt to make good governance within states an issue of global concern must be accompanied by greater democratization of the international financial institutions.

How can governments and peoples better hold to account international economic institutions, such as the WTO, the World Bank, and the IMF? This article proposes an approach based on public accountability, advocating improvements in four areas: constitutional, political, financial, and internal accountability.

The argument for more accountability is made with two caveats: more accountability is not always good–it can be distorting and costly; and, enhancing the accountability of international institutions should not justify increasing their jurisdiction for the sake of reducing the role of national governments. Constitutional accountability poses limits on how the institutions expand their activities, requiring the active consent of all members and particularly those most affected by their activities. Political accountability requires that those who make decisions in the organizations are directly answerable to all member governments and not just to the most powerful ones. The institutions' uneven record and structure of financial accountability is addressed through a model of mutual restraint. Finally, the internal accountability should ensure that technical decisions are distinguishable from political decisions. A better matching of the right kinds of accountability to the activities of the organizations would improve both their effectiveness and legitimacy.

International monetary arrangements–the practices and rules governing the creation, distribution, and management of money and credit in the world economy–have received little attention from philosophers concerned with international distributive justice. A convincing account of international distributive justice requires a description of how these arrangements should function. International monetary arrangements currently appear to have consequences that are incompatible with a global egalitarian conception of distributive justice.

There are at least three categories of questions– relating respectively to money supply, exchange rates, and debt–that can be raised in the international context. First, who should have control over key monetary decisions, such as how much, and on what terms, money and credit are being supplied within each monetary zone? Should this control belong to the citizens of a given monetary zone and their representatives alone? How should the benefits arising from the ability to create money be distributed internationally? Second, should the stability of exchange rates be a goal and, if so, how should the responsibility for maintaining stability be apportioned? When adjustment of exchange rates is required, who should bear the burdens associated with such adjustment? Third, what arrangements should govern the accumulation and discharge of debt in the international setting? In what respects should debt contracted by states be governed by different rules than debt contracted by private agents? What forms of conditionality may be imposed by creditors, such as international institutions, governments, or private lenders, as part of a just framework of international borrowing and repayment? These questions exemplify rather than exhaust the dilemmas that arise with regard to international monetary arrangements. Global egalitarians should imagine the alternative forms that such arrangements can take as elements of a realistic utopia.

This article explores normative questions about what legal rights settled immigrants should have in liberal democratic states. It argues that liberal democratic justice, properly understood, greatly constrains the distinctions that can be made between citizens and residents. The longer people stay in a society, the stronger their moral claims become, and after a while they pass a threshold that entitles them to virtually the same legal status as citizens and eventually easy access to citizenship itself.

Since the beginning of the second intifada in the fall of 2000, Israel has pursued a policy in which alleged Palestinian terrorists have been hunted down and killed by government order. The policy is not one of assassination and is consistent with international law because Israel is engaged in armed conflict with terrorists, those targeted are usually killed by conventional military means, not through deception, and the targets of the attacks are not civilians but combatants or are part of a military chain of command. Targeted killing has also been affirmed by Israel's High Court.

Although targeted killing has been pursued by Israel throughout its history, the scale of the present effort and the use of sophisticated military assets such as helicopter gunships and jet fighters set it apart from earlier practices. The effectiveness of the policy is called into doubt because it has not prevented–and may have contributed to–record numbers of Israeli civilians being killed. The policy has also resulted in informers being revealed, intelligence resources diverted, potential negotiating partners eliminated. It has also produced murderous retaliation and international condemnation of Israel. Benefits of the policy include impeding the effectiveness of terrorist operations, keeping terrorists on the run, and deterring some attacks. In addition, it affords the Israeli public a sense of revenge and retribution.

Because it targets the actual perpetrators of terrorism, targeted killing provides a proportionate and discriminate response to the threat Israel faces. Improving the policy will require better civilian oversight, greater care to eliminate harm to innocent bystanders, and refraining from killing political leaders. Despite its many shortcomings, Israel is justified in pursuing this policy so long as it faces a terrorist threat that the Palestinian Authority will not or cannot control.

Since November 2000, Israel has been implementing an assassination policy in the occupied territories. The Israeli policy is both illegal and immoral. The legal questions are much more complicated than would appear from David's argument. Although individual killings may be lawful in specific cases, this debate concerns a policy providing systematic justification for such acts. Neither international nor Israeli law ensures any backing for this policy. Armed Palestinians are not combatants according to any known legal definition. They are civilians–which is the only legal alternative–and can only be attacked for as long as they actively participate in hostilities.

The argument that this policy affords the public a sense of revenge and retribution could serve to justify acts both illegal and immoral. Clearly, lawbreakers ought to be punished. Yet, no matter how horrific their deeds, as the targeting of Israeli civilians indeed is, they should be punished according to the law. David's arguments could, in principle, justify the abolition of formal legal systems altogether.

The Israeli government has not endorsed the minor changes of policy that David suggests, and for a reason. Israel's initial refusal to acknowledge the very existence of this policy and even its later hesitant admission suggest it is aware of the problems the policy entails and of the difficulties of dismissing them. Assassinations have been part of Israel's security policy for many years, and Israel is currently the only democratic country that regards such measures as legitimate. The Palestinian violations of international law, however, cannot be used to grant legal and/or moral legitimation to these violations when perpetrated by others.

Stein and I see targeted killing in fundamentally different ways. Stein sees the Palestinian terrorists as civilian noncombatants who are not engaged in war or even armed conflict with Israel. As such, there is no legal or moral right to target them. I see targeted killing as an appropriate response to an intolerable threat. Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself against armed Palestinians who seek to kill as many innocent Israeli civilians as possible. So long as the Palestinian Authority is incapable or unwilling to halt terrorist attacks, most interpretations of international law, Israeli law, and just war tradition support Israel's efforts to stop these murderous attacks before they can be carried out.