Responding to the critiques of the four previous authors, Walzer opens with a statement of the inherent imperfection of any theory of war. He reminds us that theories are merely frameworks for decisions and cannot provide answers in and of themselves. Moral decisions in war are especially difficult, for it is often necessary to choose between equally valid claims. Walzer continues the discussion of sieges initiated by both Koontz and Boyle and concedes the validity of Koontz's criticism of inconsistency in his theory of noncombatant immunity. Addressing the different authors' moral doctrines–Hendrickson's consequentialism and Koontz's and Boyle's deontology–Walzer argues that it is better to judge each case individually, weighing both the consequences and principles, rather than strictly adhere to one moral doctrine, an approach commended by Smith. Finally, in the search for a perfect just war theory, Walzer issues a realist reminder that there can be no such thing as a morally perfect war.

As part of the roundtable “World Peace (And How We Can Achieve It),” this essay argues that an ideal state of peace might not be attainable, but a positive form of peace could be achieved on a global scale if states and peoples made a serious investment—comparable to their investment in military expenditure—in promoting the kind of mutual cultural understanding that reduces tensions and divisions and fosters cooperation. Peacemaking usually focuses on diplomatic and military détente; the argument in this essay is that these endeavors, though obviously important, are not by themselves enough for the best attainable kind of peace, for which the further and even more important aim of cultural entente is essential. This implies that peacemaking activities need to apply vastly more effort to intercultural and interpersonal exchange and education.

The bequest for the Church Peace Union—the predecessor of today's Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (and the publisher of this journal)—was given by Andrew Carnegie in February 1914. The Church Peace Union subsequently sponsored the first worldwide gathering of religious leaders, which was held in Constance, Germany, on August 2, 1914. Convened under the shadow of an impending war, not all delegates made it to the gathering. Six months previously, Carnegie had stipulated that the Church Peace Union devote its funds to the deserving poor “after the arbitration of international disputes is established and war abolished, as it certainly will be some day.” This could happen, he noted, “sooner than expected, probably by the Teutonic nations, Germany, Britain, and the United States first deciding to act in unison, the others joining later.” The outbreak of war was a catastrophic blow to such hopes, as the very nations expected to be at the core of this civilized project descended into an orgy of destruction the likes of which the world had never seen.

The first thing you notice is the darkness. Monrovia, Liberia's capital, is an hour from the airstrip, and other than the occasional dimly lit chop-hut serving rice and fish, the way into the city is obscure. One is almost tempted to idealize this perfect darkness and its accompanying quiet as pristine elemental beauty, rather than what it really is: the wreckage of a disaster whose depths, as Ryszard Kapuściński writes, “condemned some to death and transformed others into monsters.”

Exploitation of the executive exercise of covert operations has presented a dilemma, but Colby maintains that even in peacetime a “democratic society must have and respect some secrets.” Does democracy, by its inherent nature, preclude the employment of covert action, even under exceptional conditions? Colby argues that the constitutional decision-making process is an ethical and legal one. In wartime, a “just” war is the goal, and the use of covert action must be evaluated by two essential criteria: self-defense and proportionality to the act requiring self-defense.

Those studying the work of Hans J. Morgenthau, widely considered the “founding father” of the Realist School of International Relations, have long been baffled by his views on world government and the attainment of a world state—views that, it would appear, are strikingly incompatible with the author's realism. In a 1965 article in World Politics, James P. Speer II decided that it could only be “theoretical confusion” that explained why Morgenthau could on the one hand advocate a world state as ultimately necessary in his highly successful textbook, Politics Among Nations, while writing elsewhere that world government could not resolve the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States by peaceful means. According to Speer,

Statelessness, or the condition of being formally excluded from citizenship everywhere, has been deemed a “scourge” and “the most forgotten aspect of human rights in the international community” by the newly elected UN Secretary-General, António Guterres. In 2014 the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which has the mandate for the protection of stateless people globally, launched the #IBelong Campaign to eradicate statelessness by 2024. A key component of the campaign is its Global Action Plan to End Statelessness (GAP), which consists of ten actions for governments and other interested parties to undertake to end statelessness worldwide. Since the campaign's ability to end statelessness is only as strong as the regional and local actors who implement the GAP on the ground, this essay examines how the campaign has been implemented regionally. Given that Guterres and others have identified the Americas as having the potential to be the first region to end statelessness by 2024, the current essay evaluates the region's progress toward this goal.