Many college-aged people are deeply (and rightly) concerned about violence and militarism, here in the U.S. and abroad. Ukraine, Sudan, Russia, Israel and Gaza all come to mind in March of 2024.
What does any of this have to do with business?
The short answer is that “business” and our government will often acting together when it comes to militarism, violence, and war. This morning we leaned that, despite recent policy differences between the U.S. and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government, the U.S. would send a new round of weapons to Israel.
“The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, according to Pentagon and State Department officials familiar with the matter. The 2,000-pound bombs have been linked to previous mass-casualty events throughout Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.”
This continues a decades-long practice of the U.S. providing financial and technical assistance to help Israel become a military powerhouse in the Middle East.
2,000 pound bombs? A New York Times investigation found that Israel was dropping these bombs on areas that it had declared “safe” for Gazans to be in. The Times’ video investigation focused on the use of 2,000-pound bombs in an area of southern Gaza where Israel had ordered civilians to move for safety. While bombs of that size are used by several Western militaries, munitions experts say they are almost never dropped by U.S. forces in densely populated areas anymore.
Below, we note the apparent conflict between U.S. actions in supplying arms to Israel, and U.S. laws that forbid the export of arms to nations in violation of international law.
But for background, we first note that China, Russia, and its growing number of allied nations (the BRICS, for example) have been critical of the U.S. and its “imperialist” tendencies, its control of international financial flows (the dollar being the primary reserve currency for international transactions), and its use of “the rule of law” to further U.S. interests rather than the common good of the entire world. (I am skeptical of these rather self-interested assertions, but it is true that the U.S. leads the world in the export of lethal weapons, and does seem to have a serious problem with guns and violence at home.)
From 2019 to 2023, the U.S. led the world in arms exports, at 41%. The next closest nations in arms exports were France and Russia (at 11%). China was fourth with about 5% of arms exports.
The “international community” is reacting negatively toward the massive death and destruction in Gaza. That Hamas was guilty of gross and dehumanizing acts of terror against Israel is not in question. But, as a very wise woman (my mother) used to say “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
In international law, self-defense is a recognized right, particularly if the response is “proportionate” to the initial harm done or threatened. Can Israel “wipe out” Hamas? (As of March 24, 2024, commentators have noted that you can’t destroy an idea, and apparently, despite all the destruction in Gaza, many Palestinians still support the idea that Israel must be destroyed; but part of this may be motivated by the continuing failure of Israel’s leaders to pursue Palestinian self-determination and statehood, the so-called “two state solution.” Netanyahu has consistently rejected a two-state solution.) It is clearly not “proportional” when Palestinian women and children make up the vast majority of 30,000 who have lost their lives in Gaza.
So, back to a question for international business law: Is the U.S., and its armaments manufacturers, in some way blameworthy and/or complicit in what many are claiming to be “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity” in Gaza?
Defenders of Israel’s current approach to the conflict offer this defense, first noting the most frequently voiced criticism of its approach.
“ISRAEL HAS BEEN COMMITTING UNSPEAKABLE WAR CRIMES, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, AND ILLEGAL COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT AGAINST PALESTINIANS IN GAZA FOR 15 YEARS. ANY COMMENT OR ANALYSIS THAT DOESN’T TAKE THIS FACT INTO CONSIDERATION TODAY IS HOLLOW, IMMORAL, AND DEHUMANIZING.”
False! In 2005 Israel disengaged (completely left) from Gaza, removing all Jewish presence and giving land in exchange for peace with the Palestinians. Israel had legal right, under international law, to this land, having gained the land from Egypt in a defensive war against several Arab countries in 1967. Instead of peace, Israel has experienced constant rocket attacks and Hamas provoked wars over the last 15 years.
Hamas, a terrorist organization, is the ruling authority in Gaza and has controlled the region since 2007. It, and not Israel, has committed crimes against the Palestinian people, denying them basic rights such as water, electricity, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of movement. Hamas uses schools, mosques and apartment buildings as launch pads for its rockets, using its people as human shields and knowingly and deliberately putting them in harm’s way. Hamas has placed its command and control center under Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital.
Yet all of this is much disputed; humanitarian organizations have repeatedly criticized Israel for the way it is carrying on its Hamas-cleansing operations in Gaza. Regarding that aid, Israel also appears to violate a judgment and order from the U.N.’s highest court, the International Court of Justice.
So, let’s assume for the moment that Israel is in fact committing “war crimes” or “crimes against humanity” in Gaza. If so, what are we to make of all the U.S. companies that are supplying arms to Israel? Do those companies have a responsibility to not cooperate in providing weapons for Israel’s operations in Gaza? (That would mean foregoing some fairly profitable sales, which is not exactly in the “DNA” of corporations. There’s an old saying the “War is good for business.” While the statement is only partly true: war is good for some businesses.)
The U.S. Friends Service Committee (a Quaker group that does its best to promote peace) has compiled a list of U.S. companies that benefit from the current Israel-Hamas-Gaza conflict:
Let’s consider just one of these: Lockheed-Martin, the world’s largest weapons manufacturer. Lockheed-Martin is a well-respected company with a major facility near Denver:
Lockheed Martin supplies Israel with F-16 and F-35 fighter jets, which Israel has been using extensively to bomb Gaza. Israel also uses the company’s C-130 Hercules transport planes to support the ground invasion of Gaza.
Lockheed Martin manufactures AGM-114 Hellfire missiles for Israel’s Apache helicopters. One of the main weapon types used in aerial attacks on Gaza, these missiles have been used extensively in 2023. Some 2,000 Hellfire missiles were delivered to Israel sometime between Oct. 7 and Nov. 14.
Lockheed Martin subsidiary Sikorsky manufactures the CH-53K King Stallion heavy lift helicopter, to used to transport Israeli soldiers into and out of Gaza. On Jan. 8, Sikorsky was awarded $18.3 million from U.S. taxpayers’ money for continued work on the CH-53K aircraft it has provided to Israel.
On Dec. 28, Lockheed Martin was awarded a $10.5 million contract for continued support for Israel’s fleet of F-35 warplanes.
On Dec. 11, the Israeli Air Force used a Lockheed Martin C-130-J Super Hercules aircraft to drop approximately seven tons of equipment to Israeli soldiers engaging in ground attacks in Khan Younis, located in the southern Gaza Strip. This was the “first operational airdrop” that Israel has carried out since the 2006 Lebanon War.
On Nov. 9, an Israeli missile hit journalists sitting near Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The missile was reportedly a Lockheed Martin–made Hellfire R9X missile, a version of the Hellfire that was developed by the CIA for carrying out assassinations. Instead of exploding, the missile shreds its target using blades, allowing for a direct hit without collateral damage. The target in this case was not a military one.
The Israeli military also uses Lockheed Martin’s M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS). Used to fire Elbit Systems’ high-precision AccuLAR-122, the weapon was used by Israel for the first time, since the 2006 war in Lebanon, on Oct. 6, according to the Israeli military.
On an Oct. 17 call with investors, Lockheed Martin CEO, Jim Taiclet, “highlighted the Israel and Ukraine conflicts as potential drivers for increased revenue in the coming years.”
Robert Reich, in substack, wrote on March 26th that the U.S. should start withholding arms exports to Egypt, given that Netanyahu intends to go ahead with an assault on Rafa.
Reich writes: Biden has warned that an Israeli attack on Rafah — a city in the southern border of Gaza now inhabited by 1.4 million people and the last relatively safe haven for Palestinian civilians — would cross a “red line.” Netanyahu says he intends to press ahead with the attack nevertheless. “We’ll go there. We’re not going to leave them. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That October 7 doesn’t happen again. Never happens again.”
Biden’s warnings to Bibi notwithstanding, Israel is asking for more U.S. weapons and U.S. military aid, funded by U.S. taxpayers.
“Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, who met yesterday with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, reportedly pressed for expedited approval of requests for F-15 fighter jets worth billions of dollars and for a large batch of GPS-guided munitions kits.” Reich asks, “Why should the U.S. provide more military aid to Israel, especially if Israel defies Biden and attacks Rafah?
Biden issued a memorandum in February laying out standards of compliance for all countries receiving U.S. weapons, including adhering to international humanitarian rules of law. Israel has not adhered to those rules. Israel may also be violating a section of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which bars the United States from providing arms or other aid to a country that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”
When it comes to Israel, the Palestinians, and the Middle East generally, there are not just “good guys and bad guys” –– usually, there are plenty of moral mistakes to go around. There is no doubt that in dedicating time, talent, and resources to destroying Israel and refusing to make peace, many anti-Israeli actors have passed up opportunities for compromise and peace.
The following is not “fact-checked,” but seems credible: the ClubZ website, which provided the rebuttal (above) to the charge that Israel was engaged in war crimes, makes the following list of peace proposals rejected by the Palestinians.
1947 UN Partition Plan 1949 UN Resolution 194 1967 UN Resolution 242 1978 Begin/Sadat Peace Proposal 2000 Camp David Peace Proposal 2001 Taba Peace Proposal 2008 Olmert Peace Proposal 2014 Kerry’s “Contours for Peace” 2019 Trump’s “Deal of the Century
If both sides are dedicated to the destruction of the other, there will never be peace. But the complete destruction of Hamas, Netanyahu’s stated goal, is not a realistic approach to peace, either. There are alternatives, as Secretary of State Blinken pointed out to Israel’s Defense Minister on March 25th. Blinken stressed that “alternatives exist” to a major invasion of Rafah that would both better ensure Israel’s security and protect Palestinian civilians.
So, in the midst of it all, many U.S. companies seem to have no hesitation in providing massively destructive weaponry that is killing thousands of innocent women and children. Protesters are few, as in the photograph that accompanies this post. If you’re managing Lockheed Martin and profiting from the Israel-Hamas war, continuing to profit makes sense (certainly, it makes dollars and cents.) So, if the U.S. government supplies weapons to Israel in violation of its own laws, Lockheed Martin is not directly responsible for those legal violations. Which ––what else? –– makes all of those profits “perfectly legal.”
In the March 6 podcast from PRI’s The World, we learn that Turkey’s autocratic ruler, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, pushed through a law that criminalizes reporting on the damages from the massive earthquake that recently shook southern Turkey and northern Syria.
Under Turkey’s new “disinformation law,” a journalist who took videos of people directly affected by the earthquake was arrested and threatened with up to three years in prison for “intentionally sharing false information with the public.” But he got his information directly from the public itself, from the people who work in the earthquake zone and who had lived through it all.
The day after the earthquakes, Turkish president Erdogan talked about recovery efforts in a televised address and he vowed to track down people creating what he called “social chaos.”
The official line pushed by Erdogan is that the earthquake response has been under control from the start, but independent journalists and social media users told a much different story, with aid from government being painfully slow.
Turkish authorities have detained journalists, a renowned geology professor and at least 25 social media users for allegedly spreading disinformation or provocative posts. But mainly, it’s the government’s way of criminalizing criticism. In many countries like Turkey, journalists face harassment, death threats, and prison time, just for speaking truth to power.
At this point, the United States still allows journalists and others to criticize the government, largely because the First Amendment protects that right. In too many other places, the clampdown on speaking truth to power is perfectly legal, but wrong.
Russia has detained Brittany Griner, a WNBA all-star, and charged her with possession of hashish oil, found in her baggage by drug sniffing dogs at a Moscow airport. She was on her way to join a Russian basketball team –– UMMC Ekaterinburg ––before their season started; she would not have been going to Russia if the WNBA paid salaries anywhere comparable to the NBA. In Russia, Griner earns four times her Phoenix Mercury salary, but only one-fortieth what LeBron James earns from the NBA annually. (Some will say –– and it’s always been perfectly legal to say really dumb things in the U.S. –– that the Biden Administration would have seen a way to get LeBron James back to the U.S. if he were caught in Russia with drugs for personal use. This ignores how cold and distant the U.S. and Russia have become since the Ukraine invasion, with the U.S. already applying historically strict sanctions on Russia; it also ignores that LeBron wouldn’t have been playing in Russia in the first place. It’s only perfectly legal gender discrimination to be paying women less for almost everything.
As of July 7, Ms. Griner pleaded guilty and asked the court for mercy; the penalty could be as much as ten years in prison. President Biden has said that the detention is unlawful, and has promised to do all in his power to get her back to the U.S. Protests against her arrest and detention have circled the globe, and yet, Russia’s actions could also be described as “perfectly legal.” But also wrong. Read on.
The NY Times excellent podcast, The Daily, has an excellent account of the moral dilemmas at the heart of the Brittany Griner’s case. In sum, it’s clear that the Kremlin is leveraging her detention into a kind of hostage situation, looking to bargain with the U.S. over the release of one or more Russians incarcerated in the U.S. In this podcast, she is correctly described as a “political pawn” on the global chessboard.
Such bargaining –– and holding hostages as “political pawns” –– is not contrary to customary international law. Iran held 52 U.S. embassy personnel hostage and citizens for 444 days, and never faced legal consequences; there were political consequences, of course, but not legal ones. Hostage holding mirrors a kind of “might makes right” perspective: it might not be right or fair, but Russia might get the U.S. to release an imprisoned arms dealer whose clients were terrorists and other malevolent actors.
The arms dealer in question, Victor Bout, is also known as “the Merchant of Death.”
There is nothing illegal about any of this, but the raw exercise of power and leverage “just because you can” is nothing new; but it will almost always be ethically wrong.
The many death threats to public officials are] one of the more disturbing realities of our time. Most of these people, often election officials or public health officials, are trying their best just to do their duty. But the threats continue, and have escalated. In brief, sadly, many of these threats are “perfectly legal.” I’ll explain why.
First, though, let’s check on how these threats have become a kind of epidemic amidst the pandemic.
In USA Today, journalist Dennis Wagner notes that escalating number of death threats to public officials:
Anyone making anonymous threats cannot be prosecuted or sued, but some threats are not anonymous. For example, take far right commentator Josh Bernstein.
“Let me tell you something, you sick, twisted garden gnome,” Bernstein says in the video below which was posted by the watchdog group by Right Wing Watch.
“Okay? Our rights don’t come from you. They don’t come from the NIH, they don’t come from the Center for disinformation control, they don’t come from the Wuhan Health Organization, and they certainly don’t come from this fraudulent extremist authoritarian regime government, either,” Bernstein declared, referring to the National Institutes of Health, and apparently the CDC , the World Health Organization, and the Biden administration.
“They come from God. That’s where they come from, and not you, or any government, or any intel person or agency is going to do anything about it,” he warned.
“You know, I’ve always said Patrick Henry had it half right: ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ Bullshit. Give me liberty or give you death. That’s right. Signed, sealed and fucking delivered. So all I got to say about that. Tread lightly.”
So, I wrote to Wagner, wondering if this clear death threat was protected by the First Amendment. He replied that it was “political speech,” and thus protected. In one article, Wagner wrote: “But legal experts say prosecutions are rare because of the difficulty deciding what counts as a true threat and court rulings meant to protect free speech.”
I am researching this now, but I can’t believe that “the Founding Fathers” appreciation for a free press and a robust public debate would embrace threats like these. But, for now, they are “perfectly legal,” do nothing to further serious policy debate, and are beyond moral bankruptcy. So, again, what we find is atrocious behavior that is “perfectly legal. . . but wrong.”
“The very rich arrogate to themselves the lion’s share of the planetary space on which we all depend.”
The richest 1% of the world’s people (those earning more than $172,000 a year) produce 15% of the world’s carbon emissions, twice the combined impact of the poorest 50%. “On average, they emit over 70 tons of carbon dioxide per person every year, 30 times more than we can each afford to release if we’re not to exceed 1.5C of global heating.”
This disparity in environmental impact mirrors ongoing inequalities within the U.S. and around the world.
“A recent analysis of the lifestyles of 20 billionaires found that each produced an average of over 8,000 tons of carbon dioxide.” The major causes? Their jets and yachts; a superyacht alone, kept on standby (which is usual for billionaire’s boats) will generate around 7,000 tons of CO2 a year.
Bill Gates has positioned himself as a climate champion; he does not possess a yacht, but still has estimated footprint 3,000 times bigger than a conscientious citizen concerned about his or her contributions to global warming. This is largely the result of his collection of jets and helicopters. Although he claims to buy ‘green aviation fuel,” that’s demonstrably “crapola.” There is no such thing as “green aviation fuel.” As Monbiot explains, biofuels for jets, if widely deployed, “would trigger an environmental catastrophe, as so much plant material is required to power a single flight. This means that crops or plantations must displace either food production or wild ecosystems. No other “green” aviation fuels are currently available.”
Jeff Bezos sets another bad example: “the super-rich now hope to travel into space, which means that they would each produce as much carbon dioxide in 10 minutes as 30 average humans emit in one year.”
Money can even by access to meetings like COP26, which by some accountsd is the most exclusive of all climate summits. “Delegates from poor nations have been thwarted by a cruel combination of byzantine visa requirements, broken promises to make Covid vaccines available, and the mad costs of accommodation, thanks to government failures to cap local prices, or make rooms available. Even when delegates from poorer nations can scale these walls, they often find themselves excluded from the negotiating areas, and therefore unable to influence the talks.”
“By contrast, more than 500 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access, more than the combined delegations of eight nations that have already been ravaged by climate breakdown: Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Mozambique, Myanmar, Haiti, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas. The perpetrators are heard, the victims excluded.”
Monbiot’s solution is likely to be rejected in the United States, where everyone seems to hope that someday that they, too, might become “filthy rich.” It’s also hard to re-imagine capitalism. But we could end concentrated wealth if that could be accomplished politically. As Monbiot says, “Our survival depends on it.
Preventing systemic environmental collapse means driving extreme wealth to extinction.” Extreme wealth is perfectly legal; at the current moment, the way that extreme wealth is used is also quite wrong.
When I was just 4 years old, in 1953, my sister and I lined up
at the public library to get our polio vaccine in little sugar cubes. One of
the girls in our first grade had crutches from her bout with polio, but
otherwise we were spared from widespread epidemics, other than measles and
chicken pox, neither of which was terribly disabling. There were no homeless
people or panhandlers on the streets, though my mother seemed fond of quoting
Matthew’s gospel that “the poor will always be with us.” But watching the
world’s reaction to the coronavirus, it’s looking like fewer of the poor will
be with us, especially as an even more
serious pandemic seems likely in the not too distant
future.
Poor nations are likely to have greater losses from the
coronavirus, and in both China and the U.S., the poor are at a distinct
disadvantage. In China, where the
outbreak began, the nation’s poor have less access to supplies, and have
neither the money or the connections to leave the country. As the cost of food,
medicines and supplies increase because of the outbreak, only the well-to-do in
China can maintain their lifestyles; those living hand to mouth, the vast
majority of China’s 1.3 billion population, are being left behind.
Low-wage workers in China are often on the front lines in
containing the virus; delivery drivers or small shop workers don’t have the
option of staying home, because they lack savings or social support. Workers
who are informally employed get no social security protection, and those living
in crowded conditions under quarantine are more likely to be exposed to the
virus. If you are well-connected in China –– with the right guanxi, that
is –– you can get permission to travel.
In the United States, business executives are foregoing first
class tickets on commercial airlines in favor of private planes. The well-to-do
have begun traveling to more remote locations.
Concierge doctors are seeing a rise in wealthy clients consulting on
best practices to avoid the virus. And masks?
Only the best: instead of spending four bucks on a bottle of hand
sanitizer, you can get a European luxury brand “rinse free hand wash” with
floral notes of pear and bergamot for $35, but only if you know the right
people.
The very-well-to-do can buy round the clock access to doctors,
member-only hospital amenities (to avoid more public emergency rooms); family
memberships run about $8,000 a year, and for one concierge provider, Sollis,
membership inquiries are spiking.
Existing members have the means to stock up on antiviral medications
such as Tamiflu and Xofluza, respiratory medications like Albuterol inhalers
and Sudafed, and antibiotics like Levaquin and Azithromycin.
In parts of Silicon Valley, some of the tech-elite began
preparing for hard times by revamping abandoned missile silos, converting them
into luxury bunkers. The New York Times notes
that “coronavirus is precisely the doomsday scenario they’ve been preparing for.” (The other “doomsday scenario” is, of course,
runaway global warming and some of Silicon Valley’s elite have brought huge
tracts of pristine land in faraway places or created fabulous underground
bunkers to ride out disaster times.)
Currently, one former partner at a venture capital firm has been
stocking up on canned food, water, hand sanitizer and toilet paper in
anticipation of an outbreak. A high-end air purifier he’s considering ––
Molekule Air ––costs $799.
It’s not just the poor in China or the U.S. that are less likely
to be with us; entire nations
have borne the brunt of rare disease outbreaks, most of them with the lowest
per capita incomes. For climate change, those nations least able
to afford adaptation –– those nations
that are the least responsible for global warming –– will suffer the most.
The so-called “China Dream” and the “American Dream –– both of
which espouse enhanced economic and social opportunity –– can now be seen as empty
promises, since only the privileged can better their chances of survival. The
dream of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” and the “War on Poverty” became lost
in the rise of neo-classical economics and the revival of “every person for
themselves” in the Reagan era. The myth
reborn then, which still persists, is that we must all –– both as individuals
and business firms –– pursue our own self-interest aggressively and relentlessly
to create the greatest GDP and thus, the greatest good. (Although it’s by now
abundantly clear that increasing
GDP does not increase social well-being.)
The myth that self-interest maximizing creates good is akin to
Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” slogan, and corrupted the notion that we are all
in this together. Remember “e pluribus unum” –– out of many, one? Forget it: the rise of “Chicago Man” (homo
economicus, or the rational self-maximizing person or firm) went hand in
hand with the denigration of government services that began in the Reagan
Administration. The scariest words in
the English language were, according to Reagan, “I’m from the government and
I’m here to help you.”
Grover Norquist, the tax cutting champion of that age, was said
to have aimed to make government so small that it could be drowned in a bathtub.
Deregulatory fervor
brought us the Savings and Loan Crisis and eventually, the Financial Crisis of
2008. The myth of the self-regulating
market has resulted in a free for all in which money and position have been steadily
leveraged, decade after decade, into crony capitalism, with its lenience on big
financial firms (bailouts but no quid pro quo) and tax breaks for
corporations and the well-to-do. All
this as the poor are left to fend for themselves.
It’s all perfectly legal, of course. But even as tax cuts and willful neglect of
public goods like bridges and tunnels become dangerous, the regulatory
infrastructure has suffered, as well.
One reason the government is so ill-prepared to deal with the
coronavirus is that budgets for the CDC and other fast-response teams have been
cut year by year, especially in the Trump
Administration.
As George Packer wrote recently in The
Atlantic, The White House has “treated the coronavirus epidemic as more
of a political problem for the president than a public-health one. Experts have
been muzzled, the White House has consolidated control of the messaging
campaign, and Trump himself has made numerous false statements about the
progress of the disease. As for the administration’s response, budget and
personnel cuts in key health offices have left the country unprepared for the
likely scale of what’s to come.”
But the seeds of this disastrous response go back forty
years. Under Reagan, Bush I, Clinton,
Bush II and Obama, too many average working-class Americans did not benefit
from globalization. Now that many of the harmful effects of globalization are
being felt here at home, the main beneficiaries can be expected to protect
themselves first, as they are predictably doing right now. The self-serving bias from those that have
has been very strong in this land.
Instead of “out of many, one,” we now have “I’m number one, and I
don’t know you.” Omnis homo sibi. It’s as though we’re telling large numbers of
our own citizens that if they don’t have the money to up their odds against the
coronavirus, it’s their own fault.
But we see now the direct effects of our general insistence on
“rugged individualism” and the myth that the best path forward as a society is
to maximize our own economic interests.
The unwelcome truth exposed by this pandemic is that our ethics are
being tested, and are getting a D minus at best. Frank Snowden, author of Black
Plague: Epidemics in Society told NPR recently that epidemics hold a
mirror to civilization. In human
history, events like these bring out the need to blame “the other” (China, in
this case), the need to keep out “dark strangers” who bring disease, and the
impulse to ignore knowledge from experts, science, and the lessons of
history. Donald Trump has captured all
of these, and typifies a mindless and unethical response of denial, blame, and
distancing.
As Snowden puts it, we should be acting in an international,
coordinated way, based on truth and science, and learning the lessons of
history. It is not just a technical
question, but rather, a question of ethics and moral courage: are we prepared
to take up that challenge? We are
not. Our social capital, as Robert Putnam has
pointed out, is in short supply.
The vast majority of U.S. citizens, and our Nation as a
functioning whole, cannot just “go it alone” against the winds of global
pandemics or any other global challenge. But for those rich enough to find safe
harbors, the poor will not always be with them.
