Introduction: International Justice and Transnational Power

Abstract

The book's project of basing the most important transnational duties on the demands of specific relationships begins with criticism of leading alternatives: demanding duties of responsiveness to neediness as such, as advocated by Peter Singer and his allies, and global extrapolations of egalitarian justice, based on global interdependence. Then, strong, unmet duties to help foreigners in developing countries will be derived from the need to avoid the abuse of power in specific interactions: transnational manufacturing, world trade agreements, efforts to contain global warming, and the exercise of geopolitical influence (including ’the American empire’). Finally, the reduction of these injustices is connected with the aspiration to global civic friendship, the need to reduce abuses due to the interests and capacities of governments of major developed countries, especially the United States, and the productive role of a global social movement explicitly opposed to these governments' tendencies toward injustice.