by Rushworth M. Kidder
Ethics, some say, is fine for the small stuff. But when the stakes really get ratcheted up in business or diplomacy–c’mon, ethics? Don’t we need something more hardball?
It’s a good time to ask. Talk about ratcheting. That’s what India did when it exploded five nuclear devices last week. Those tests, and the decision by Pakistan to respond in kind, should force multinational firms to reconsider how and whether to do business in India. Reason: These tests reopened what is arguably the most high-leverage moral issue of our times.
Why “moral”? Because, frankly, there’s no other satisfactory way to frame this debate. It’s not a legal issue. India violated no law. Nor do the standard frames–political, diplomatic, economic, technological, military–account for the difficulties. True, we can explain a lot by looking at internal politics or studying diplomatic outcries. We can watch markets respond. We can comment on India’s technological prowess, or assess her military gains.
But at bottom the question is not, “How can we best explain it?” It is, “Was it the right thing for India to do?” And that’s a moral question.
Other nations typically painted the issue in black and white. Presuming that it’s good to ban nuclear weapons and bad to build them, the West found that India acted immorally. The response in India was different: A poll in the Times of India found a 91 percent approval for the first series of three tests.
If you’re serious about ethical analysis, that raises a tough conundrum. You can dismiss nearly one-sixth of the world’s population as immoral. Or you see this as something more than a right-versus-wrong issue. It’s a question of right versus right, with formidable moral arguments on both sides.
How so? Start by noting that it represents a classic stand-off of the short term against the long term. The moral case for the former–India’s immediate security needs–hinges on the perceived threat from its saber-rattling neighbors, China and Pakistan. Never mind (goes this argument) that building nuclear weapons may produce long-term instability. The short-term gain of a strong deterrent is imperative for survival and trumps every other choice.
Conversely, you can build a case for the long term. India’s children will suffer miserably if they’re handed a world chock-full of nukes. So serious is that difficulty (goes this argument) that it easily overshadows any risk of immediate invasion.
Similarly, you can build arguments pitting us against them. Here, the defense of a single nation is hugely important–the argument supporting the smaller us. But so is the global benefit of forestalling an arms race–the argument of the larger them.
How to resolve these competing claims? Start by recognizing two fundamentally different ways of determining what’s right. On one hand are those who feel that ethics is best served by doing the greatest good for the greatest number. To them, the rightness of an action lies in its outcomes: If what we do produces good consequences, we’ve done the moral thing. And since the consequences of nuclear proliferation are so appalling, the right thing to do is to condemn India vigorously. That’s President Clinton’s utilitarian approach.
On the other hand lies an equally noble moral principle, focusing on universal principles. Arguing that the five nations in the nuclear club (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France) are being hypocritical in asserting that it’s okay for them to have these weapons but not for anyone else, India has identified a kind of discrimination that, in principle, ought to be repugnant to democratic societies everywhere, regardless of its outcomes. It’s the “We’ve got ours but you can’t have yours” fallacy, so often heard in the environment-versus-development arguments about the emerging nations. That’s Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s more Kantian approach.
So who’s right? Surely it’s right to focus on outcomes and reduce proliferation. And surely it’s right to honor the principles of fairness, equal access, and mutual respect. One thing is sure: It’s too glib to dismiss either side as simply “wrong.”
Can we resolve this dilemma? Probably. But resolution may require movement on both sides. The Indian explosions are a call to the nuclear club to move far more rapidly to disassemble nuclear arsenals and give granite assurances of their refusal to strike first. That would deflate the moral authority of India’s discrimination-and-hypocrisy argument. The Western outrage, in turn, is a call to India to embrace the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. That would gut the utilitarian arguments of the West.
Is there a third way through? Can we turn this wrenching dilemma into a win-win trilemma? Hopefully. India seems to want a more open business environment: Just days prior to the tests, Prime Minister Vajpayee unveiled a wide-ranging 90-day reform plan to the Confederation of Indian Industries, aimed at attracting more foreign investment and bumping up India’s economic growth. But a trilemma will only emerge if all sides stop moralizing about wrongdoing, engage in serious ethical analysis, acknowledge right on both sides, and keep seeking moral resolutions.
When the stakes are this high, nothing less than ethics can properly frame the debate.
(c)1998 by Rushworth Kidder
