Three Ethical Traditions

People interact with one another on a daily basis. Face-to-face, emails, social media and various other platforms are used to invoke conversation. However, communicating and interacting between entire nations is a much more complex issue. The unwritten rules about qualifies as moral and ethical in issues of balancing power, state sovereignty, and humanitarian cases contributes to the problem. Not only are these issues sensitive, but the wide variety of cultural precedents and beliefs brought to the table make compromise a difficult task. Exiting the twentieth century and carrying into the twenty-first century is the ethical questions that accompany nuclear deterrence. In order to understand the moral and ethical problems that tie into nuclear …show more content…
Morality in short terms involves “claims to rightness or justice” (Amstutz 10). In essence, morality is the distinction between what is right, true, and good and what is wrong, deceitful, and hurtful. Ethics, on the other hand “will involve the indentification, illumination, and application of relevant moral norms” (Amstutz 11). To summarize, ethics is the application of moral principles to real life situations. In terms of translating morality and ethics to international politics there are three ethical traditions: realism, cosmopolitanism (idealism), and communitarianism (principled realism). Out of these ethical traditions spring coordinating strategies of ethical decision making: consequentialism, deontology, and tridimensional ethics. …show more content…
Where realism emphasized the state and idealism the individual, communitarianism attempts to find a healthy balance between the two emphases. Communitarianism “emphasizes the role of global civil society in fostering functional transnational ties to address specific issues and challenges confronting the international community” (Amstutz 34). Rather than dismissing the value of either the state or individual, communitarianism recognizes the importance of both to first recognize the humanitarian problems that individuals across the globe face, and the role that capable states play in addressing those individual issues. In unity with realism, communitarianism recognizes the anarchy of the international system, but it differentiates by surmising that the sovereignty of the state is meant to create “a peaceful and just world…best advanced through the right actions of member states” (Amstutz 36). Power is not the motivation for action, rather the quest for a just global order founded upon individuals acting justly within a state. Finally, the power that a state possess should be used prudently in “the solving of global issues” (Amstutz 35). Thus, communitarianism attempt to balance the sovereignty of the state, with the value of