A speaks against the proposal.
"Look here, the question of whether states can behave morally toward one another is not one that has been neglected, nor is it an open question. Many great thinkers have worked on it and have concluded that for various compelling reasons, the concept of morality or ethics simply does not enter into behavior between states. If every nation were willing to be Mr. Nice Guy, and if all nations had comparable values and a similar stage of advancement, then there might be a way for them to get together and work out laws, to which all would agree to be bound. But that clearly is not possible now. Note that it was tried, even in our century, with the League of Nations, but that proved a hopeless failure -- a real joke.
"You have to realize that nations are by definition selfish. Sometimes their actions seem justifiable: they may need to get at the resources of other nations as a matter of survival. Or, they may just be expansionist for expansion's sake. This seems to be a human trait, perhaps based on the search for glory. In order to guard against the inevitable rise of Napoleonic types, nations have traditionally formed balances of power, in which one powerful nation may gather several smaller nations around itself in an alliance against the dominant rival.
"It also has to be admitted that a strong nation can more or less do what it wants to, to a weak nation. Many times in history strong nations have exploited or even destroyed weak nations. This is a fact of life, having to do both with human selfishness and with the structure of the world. Because of it, by the way, a leader who takes a pacifist stance wiI1 not win any praise for this moral gesture. If he doesn't keep his nation prepared militarily he is actively tempting aggressors to attack.
"Besides the points I've made so far, which are more or less morally neutral, there are also reasons why it is positively a good thing that nations do not have a moral relationship with one another. The first reason is the importance of national or cultural independence. Only when all the sovereign nations agree that the prime rule is for each to mind its own business, can each one set about performing its functions as it wishes. If you allowed anyone who thinks he knows best to interfere in the affairs of other countries there would be chaos. You'd also hear plenty of goodwill rhetoric being used to cover up the selfish motivations of the intervening power.
"So, it's reasonable policy for all statesmen to form a binding agreement that they won't criticize each other's domestic affairs. At times this may mean that a people suffering from brutality or even genocide will not be saved by the outside world. But apparently people don't want to save their fellow men if it is inconvenient. Experience shows that an individual who sees an individual suffering feels compelled to help, but not so a nation. Groups are simply less moral than individuals, even if they are composed of individuals. Why this should be so is a mystery, but there you are.
"A second good reason for keeping "morals" out of international affairs is that some nations would get so morally worked up about erasing evil that they would never stop fighting. Or they may insist on the unconditional surrender of an enemy. Nations are also notorious for thinking that their culture is better than any other. It's obvious that each of the two superpowers thinks its ideology is pure and right, and the other's is sinful. If the superpowers had gone to war over this, the whole human race might have been wiped out. Note that in fact leaders in both the United States and the Soviet Union react according to events rather than act according to ideology, on the world stage. Leaders know how the game must be played and ideals are not part of this game. If you were in office, you'd learn it quickly, too, and you'd stop thinking about the morality of international relations.
"In short, people's natural instinct may tell them that something wrong or unfair is going on, internationally, but there's really not much that can be done about it. Whereas when a member of domestic society engages in criminal behavior his neighbors can call the police, in the international arena there is no authority to resort to -- each nation must look after itself. Nations and their relative strengths are the final determinant of who gets away with. what. I assure you, this is reality."
B speaks for the proposal.
"Rubbish! You say it's not appropriate to apply the concept of morality to international activities, but I ask you how it is possibIe that any such activity -- which may affect the welfare of millions of people -- could be exempt from moral concern. If you and I were two cave men standing here talking I could see how it might be possible for us to treat morality as some curiosity that could be dispensed with. But we are both products of Western civilization, so we tend to think of all human affairs as subject to moral judgment. Moreover, we are products of the modern world wherein the behavior of a government is thought to be subject to the wishes and approval of the people. Indeed we look upon the defining of the rights of the individual -- human rights -- as our own major cultural achievement.
"At least partly, our belief in human rights comes from a belief in human equality. All members of the human race have some things in common. True, there is much cultural variation in behavior, but basically people like and dislike the same things. For instance, people like to bring up their children in good health, and they don't like to have their property stolen. All of this similarity gives rise to fairly universal laws. For this reason it seems to me that a general law prevails, and that nations are subject to it as well as individuals. An example would be that it is wrong for one nation to steal from another, just as it is wrong for one individual to steal from another.
"Of course I recognize that people act not only as individuals, but as members of groups. Group life is an important reality and I'll allow that groups have some rights, such as to try to survive and to practice their culture. But since there are many groups, and their interests may conflict, they should make efforts to compromise. The golden rule seems to be the conclusion that reason leads to. Groups can recognize other groups as having similar human wants and needs, and even "rights"- as themselves. This is not such an unrealistic proposal. Consider the Geneva Conventions. Here each nation has recognized, for example, that all wounded soldiers are in the same boat. So, mechanisms have been established to protect medical stations on the battlefield -- something that a skeptic may have said could never happen.
"I think we need to admit that there is a direction to history. The whys and wherefores of international morality are not a function of a static structure of the world, nor of a fixed human nature. We should look at what is actually happening. On the one hand, interests are able to become more organized over time, as we see in the concentration of wealth and technological knowhow. At the same time values are able to become more organized and more "rationalized." Note how ecologists have made the public aware, in the last generation, of the priority of clean air and water -- something that could have been ignored if interests were the only factor that commanded power. I think that much of the argument that goes on, pretending to deal with the national interest as against that of the individual, or humanity as a whole, has instead to do simply with interest against value.
"In short, I do not buy your story that international morality is a nonsubject. It simply does not ring true to me. There cannot be a category of human affairs which defies moral consideration."
ethics 倫理
the League of Nations （国際連合の前身である）国際連盟
genocide 集団殺害
superpowers 超大国（この討論は冷戦終結前に行われた）
the Geneva Conventions 傷病兵の保護や捕虜の待遇等に関するジュネーブ諸条約