Abstract

In this dissertation I investigate the nature of the relations between states from the moral point of view. I argue that morality is relevant at the level of international relations and that it plays the same regulative role that it plays at the interpersonal level. I am specifically concerned with two issues of international relations: intervention and international distributive justice. Rather than assessing these issues from a particular moral theory, I examine them from the point of view of basic individual rights. Based on the assumption that individuals are subjects of rights, and on the argument that the rights of states are derived from the rights of individuals, I conclude that interventions can only be legitimatized when they are done on behalf of human rights. However, this is not a license to aggression against any and every state that we may regard as illegitimate because it violates the rights of its members. I argue that interventions are legitimate only when they are done to protect the basic rights of the recipients of the intervention. ;I also examine the moral limits of international justice and argue that because individuals are subjects of rights, people of diverse nationalities have distributive obligations to one another. My conclusion is based on the claim that subsistence is one of the basic rights of individuals and that individuals are entitled to receive immediate food aid in cases of famine or any other catastrophe that leaves them helpless to provide for themselves